University  of  California  •  Berkeley 


Bi 


BILL  NYE'S 


CORDWOOD 


COPYRIGHT.    1887 


CHICAGO: 
RHODES  &  McCLURE  PUBLISHING  CO. 

1887. 


BILL  NYE'S 

OORDWOOD. 


BlLLi   ftYE   ON   THE  (§OW   INDUSTRY. 

A  COWBOY  COLLEGE  NEEDED  TO  EDUCATE  YOUNG   MEN  TO 
THIS   PKOFESSION. 

No  one  can  go  through  the  wide  territory  of 
Montana  to-day  without  being  strongly  impressed 
with  the  wonderful  growth  of  the  great  cattle  grow- 
ing and  grazing  industry  of  that  territory.  And 
yet  Montana  is  but  the  northern  extremity  of  the 
great  grazing  belt  which  lies  at  the  foot  of  the 
Kocky  Mountains,  extending  from  the  British 
possessions  on  the  north  to  the  Mexican  border  on 
the  south,  extending  eastward,  too,  as  far  as  the 
arable  lands  of  Dakota,  Nebraska  and  Kansas. 

Montana,  at  this  season  of  the  year,  is  the  para- 
dise of  the  sleek,  high-headed,  2-year-old  Texan 
steer,  with  his  tail  over  the  dashboard,  as  well  as 
the  stock  yearling,  born  on  the  range,  beneath  the 
glorious  mountain  sky  and  under  the  auspices  of 
roundup  No.  21. 

I  do  not  say  this  to  advertise  the  stock  growing 
business,  because  it  is  already  advertised  too  much, 


18  BILL  NY&S 

anyway.  So  many  millionaires  have  been  made 
with  "free  grass"  and  the  early-rising,  automatic 
branding  iron  that  every  man  in  the  United  States 
who  has  a  cow  that  can  stand  the  journey  seems  to 
be  about  to  take  her  west  and  embark  in  business 
as  a  cattle  king. 

But  let  me  warn  the  amateur  cow  man  that  in 
the  great  grazing  regions  it  takes  a  good  many 
acres  of  thin  grass  to  maintain  the  adult  steer  in 
affluence  for  twelve  months,  and  the  great  pastures 
at  the  base  of  the  mountains  are  being  pretty  well 
tested.  Moreover,  I  believe  that  these  great  con- 
ventions of  cattlemen,  where  free  grass  and  easily 
acquired  fortunes  are  naturally  advertised,  will  tend 
to  overstock  the  ranges  at  last  and  founder  the 
goose  that  now  lays  the  golden  egg.  This,  of 
course,  is  really  none  of  my  business,  but  if  I  didn't 
now  and  then  refer  to  matters  that  do  not  concern 
me  I  would  be  regarded  as  reticent. 

My  intention,  however,  in  approaching  the  great 
cow  industry,  which,  by  the  way,  is  anything  but 
an  industry,  being  in  fact  more  like  the  seductive 
manner  whereby  a  promissory  note  acquires  2  per 
cent,  per  month  without  even  stopping  to  spit  on 
its  hands,  was  to  refer  incidentally  to  the  proposi- 
tion of  an  English  friend  of  mine.  This  friend, 
seeing  at  once  the  great  magnitude  of  the  cow  in- 

7 


CORDWOOD.  19 

dustry  and  the  necessity  for  more  and  more  cow- 
boys, has  suggested  the  idea  of  establishing  a 
cowboys'  college,  or  training  school,  for  self-made 
young  men  who  desire  to  become  accomplished. 
The  average  Englishman  will  most  always  think  of 
something  that  nobody  else  would  naturally  think 
of.  Now,  our  cattleman  would  have  gone  on  for 
years  with  his  great  steer  emporium  without  think- 
ing of  establishing  an  institution  where  a  poor  boy 
might  go  and  learn  to  rope  a  4-year-old  in  such  a 
way  as  to  throw  him  on  his  stomach  with  a  sicken- 
ing thud. 

The  young  Maverick  savant  could  take  a 
kindergarten  course  in  the  study  of  cow  brands. 
Here  a  wide  field  opens  up  to  the  scholar.  The 
adult  steer  in  the  great  realm  of  beef  is  now 
a  walking  Chinese  wash  bill,  a  Hindoo  poem  in  the 
original  junk  shop  alphabet,  a  four-legged  Greek  in- 
scription, punctuated  with  jim-jams,  a  stenograph- 
er's notes  of  a  riot,  a  bird's-eye  view  of  a  premature 
explosion  in  a  hardware  store. 

The  cowboy  who  can  at  once  grapple  with  the 
great  problem  of  where  to  put  the  steer  with  "B 
bar  B"  on  left  shoulder,  "Key  circle  G"  on  left 
side,  "Heart  D  Heart"  on  right  hip,  left  ear  crop, 
wattle  te  wattle,  and  seven  hands  round  with  "Dash 
B  Dash"  on  right  shoulder  "vented,"  wattle  on 
dew  lap  vented,  and  "P.  D.  Q.,"  "C.  0.  D.,"  and 


20  BILL 

"N.  G."  vented  on  right  side,  keeping  track  of  trans- 
fers, range  and  postoffice  of  last  owner,  has  certain- 
ly got  a  future,  which  lies  mostly  ahead  of  him. 

But  now  that  the  idea  has  been  turned  loose,  I 
shall  look  forward  to  the  time  when  wealthly  men 
who  have  been  in  the  habit  of  dying  and  leaving 
their  money  to  other  institutions,  will  meet  with  a 
change  of  heart,  and  begin  to  endow  the  cowboys' 
college,  and  the  Maverick  hotbed  of  broncho 
sciences. 

We  live  in  an  age  of  rapid  advancement  in  all 
branches  of  learning,  and  people  who  'do  not  rise 
early  in  the  morning  will  not  retain  their  position 
in  the  procession.  I  look  forward  with  confidence 
to  the  day  when  no  cowboy  will  undertake  to  ride 
the  range  without  a  diploma.  Educated  labor  is 
what  we  need.  Cowboys  who  can  tell  you  in  scien- 
tific terms  why  it  is  always  the  biggest  steer  that 
eats  "pigeon  weed"  in  the  spring  and  why  he 
should  swell  up  and  bust  on  a  rising  Chicago  mar- 
ket. 

I  hope  that  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  in  the 
holster  of  the  cowboy  we  will  find  the  Iliad  instead 
of  the  killiad,  the  unabridged  dictionary  instead  of 
Mr.  Remington's  great  work  on  homicide.  As  it 
is  now  on  the  ranges  you  might  ride  till  your 
Mexican  saddle  ached  before  you  would  find  a  cow- 
boy who  carries  a  dictionary  with  him.  For  that 


CORD  WOOD.  21 

reason  the  language  used  on  the  general  round-up 
is  at  times  grammatically  incorrect,  and  many  of 
our  leading  cowboys  spell  "cawy-yard"  with  a  "k." 

A  college  for  riding,  roping,  branding,  cutting 
out,  corralling,  loading  and  unloading,  and  handling 
cattle  generally,  would  be  a  great  boon  to  our 
young  men,  who  are  at  present  groping  in  dark  and 
pitiable  ignorance  of  the  habits  of  the  untutored 
cow.  Let  the  young  man  first  learn  how  to  sit  up 
three  nights  in  succession,  through  a  bad  March 
snow  storm  and  "hold"  a  herd  of  restless  cattle. 
Let  him  then  ride  through  the  hot  sun  and  alkali 
dust  a  week  or  two,  subsisting  on  a  chunk  of  dis- 
agreeable side  pork  just  large  enough  to  bait  a  trap. 
Then  let  his  horse  fall  on  him  and  injure  his  con- 
stitution and  preamble.  All  these  things  would 
give  the  cow  student  an  idea  of  how  to  ride  the 
range.  The  amateur  who  has  never  tried  to  ride  a 
skittish  and  sulky  range  has  still  a  great  deal  to 
learn. 

Perhaps  I  have  said  too  much  on  this  subject,  but 
when  I  get  thoroughly  awakened  on  this  great 
porterhouse  steak  problem  I  am  apt  to  carry  the 
matter  too  far. 

OYEI^HEAI^D  IN  DUDBDOM. 

"Why,  Awthaw,  what  makes  youah  hand  twem- 
ble  so?" 


22  BILL 


p  HEW  BIOGRAPHY  OP  GALILEO. 

SOME  HERETOFOEE  UNPUBLISHED  FACTS  ABOUT  THE  QUEER 

OLD  ITALIAN  —  HIS  REMARKABLE  INVENTIONS  AND 

DISCOVERIES  —  HIS  BOOKS. 


BILL   NYE. 


Galilei,  commonly  called  Galileo,  was  born  at 
Pisa  on  the  14th  day  February,  1564.  He  was  a 
man  who  discovered  some  of  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples underlying  the  movements,  habits,  and  per- 
sonal peculiarities  of  the  earth.  He  discovered 
things  with  marvelous  fluency.  Born  as  he  was, 
at  a  time  when  the  rotary  motion  of  the  earth  was 
still  in  its  infancy  and  astronomy  taught  only  in  a 
crude  way,  Galileo  started  in  to  make  a  few  dis- 
coveries and  advance  some  theories  of  which  he 
was  very  fond. 

He  was  the  son  of  a  musician  and  learned  to  play 
several  instruments  himself,  but  not  in  such  a  way 
as  to  arouse  the  jealousy  of  the  great  musicians  of 
his  day.  They  came  and  heard  him  play  a  few 
selections  and  then  they  went  home  contented  with 
their  own  music.  Galileo  played  for  several  years 
in  the  band  at  Pisa,  and  people  who  heard  him  said 
that  his  manner  of  gazing  out  over  the  Pisan  hills 
with  a  far-away  look  in  his  eye  after  playing  a  se- 
lection, while  he  gently  upended  his  alto  horn  and 


CORDWOOD.  23 

worked  the  mud- valve  as  it  poured  out  about  a  pint 
of  moist  melody  that  had  accumulated  in  the  flues 
of  the  instrument,  was  simply  grand. 

At  the  age  of  20  Galileo  began  to  discover.  His 
first  discoveries  were,  of  course,  clumsy  and  poorly 
made,  but  very  soon  he  began  to  turn  out  a  neat  and 
durable  discovery  that  would  stand  for  years. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  Galileo  noticed  the 
swinging  of  a  lamp  in  a  church,  and,  observing 
that  the  oscillations  were  of  equal  duration,  he  in- 
ferred that  this  principle  might  be  utilized  in  the 
exact  measurement  of  time.  From  this  little  acci- 
dent, years  after,  came  the  clock,  one  of  the  most 
useful  of  man's  dumb  friends.  And  yet  there  are 
people  who  will  read  this  litttle  incident  and  still 
hesitate  about  going  to  church. 

Galileo  also  invented  the  thermometer,  the  micro- 
scope, and  the  proportional  compass.  He  seemed 
to  invent  things,  not  for  the  money  to  be  obtained 
in  that  way,  but  solely  for  the  joy  of  being  first  on 
the  ground.  He  was  a  man  of  infinite  genius  and 
perseverance.  He  was  also  very  fair  in  his  treat- 
ment of  other  inventors.  Though  he  did  not  per- 
sonally invent  the  rotary  motion  of  the  earth,  he 
heartily  indorsed  it  and  said  it  was  a  good  thing. 
He  also  came  out  in  a  card  in  which  he  said  that 
he  believed  it  to  be  a  good  thing,  and  that  he  hoped 
some  day  to  see  it  applied  to  the  other  planets. 


24:  BILL 

He  was  also  the  inventor  of  a  telescope  that  had 
a  magnifying  power  of  thirty  times.  He  presented 
this  to  the  Venetian  senate,  and  it  was  used  in 
making  appropriations  for  river  and  harbor  improve- 
ments. 

By  telescopic  investigation  Galileo  discovered  the 
presence  of  microbes  in  the  moon,  but  was  unable 
to  do  anything  for  it.  I  have  spoken  of  Mr.  Galileo 
all  the  way  through  this  article  informally,  calling 
him  by  his  first  name,  but  I  feel  so  thoroughly  ac- 
quainted with  him,  though  there  was  such  a  strik- 
ing difference  in  our  ages,  that  I  am  almost  justified 
in  using  his  given  name  while  talking  of  him. 

Galileo  also  sat  up  nights  and  visited  with  Venus 
through  a  long  telescope  which  he  had  made  him- 
self from  an  old  bamboo  fishing-rod. 

But  astronomy  is  a  very  enervating  branch  of 
science.  Galileo  frequently  came  down  to  break- 
fast with  red,  heavy  eyes ;  eyes  that  were  swollen 
full  of  unshed  tears.  Still  he  persevered.  Day  after 
day  he  worked  and  toiled.  Year  after  year  he  went 
on  with  his  task  till  he  had  worked  out  in  his  own 
mind  the  satellites  of  Jupiter  and  placed  a  small  tin 
tag  on  each  one,  so  that  he  would  know  it  readily 
when  he  saw  it  again.  Then  he  began  to  look  up 
Saturn's  rings  and  investigate  the  freckles  on  the 
sun.  He  did  not  stop  at  trifles,  but  went  bravely 
on  till  everybody  came  for  miles  to  look  at  him  and 


CO  ED  WOOD.  25 

get  him  to  write  something  funny  in  their  albums. 
It  was  not  an  unusual  thing  for  Galileo  to  get  up 
in  the  morning,  after  a  wearisome  night  with  a 
fretful  new-born  star,  to  find  his  front  yard  full  of 
autograph  albums.  Some  of  them  were  little  red 
albums  with  floral  decorations  on  them,  while  others 
were  the  large  plush  and  alligator  albums  of  the  af- 
fluent. Some  were  new  and  had  the  price-mark  still 
on  them,  while  others  were  old,  foundered  albums, 
with  a  droop  in  the  back  and  little  flecks  of  egg  and 
gravy  on  the  title-page.  All  came  with  a  request 
for  Galileo  "to  write  a  little,  witty,  characteristic 
sentiment  in  them." 

Galileo  was  the  author  of  the  hydrostatic  para- 
dox and  other  sketches.  He  was  a  great  reader 
and  a  fluent  penman.  One  time  he  was  absent  from 
home,  lecturing  in  Venice  for  the  benefit  of  the 
United  Aggregation  of  Mutual  Admirers,  and  did  not 
return  for  two  weeks,  so  that  when  he  got  back  he 
found  the  front  room  full  of  autograph  albums.  It 
is  said  that  he  here  demonstrated  his  great  fluency 
and  readiness  as  a  thinker  and  writer.  He  waded 
through  the  entire  lot  in  two  days  with  only  two 
men  from  West  Pisa  to  assist  him.  Galileo  came 
out  of  it  fresh  and  youthful,  and  the  following  night 
he  was  closeted  all  night  with  another  inventor,  a 
wicker-covered  microscope,  and  a  bologna  sausage. 
The  investigations  were  carried  on  for  two  weeks, 


26  BILL 

after  which  Galileo  went  out  to  the  inebriate  asy- 
lum and  discovered  some  new  styles  of  reptiles. 

Galileo  was  the  author  of  a  little  work  called  "I 
Discarsi  e  Dimas-Trazioni  Matematiche  Intorus  a 
Due  Muove  Scienze."  It  was  a  neat  little  book,  of 
about  the  medium  height,  and  sold  well  on  the 
trains,  for  the  Pisan  newsboys  on  the  cars  were 
very  affable,  as  they  are  now,  and  when  they  came 
and  leaned  an  armful  of  these  books  on  a  passen- 
ger's leg  and  poured  a  long  tale  into  his  ear  about 
the  wonderful  beauty  of  the  work  and  then  pulled 
in  the  name  of  the  book  from  the  rear  of  the  last  car, 
•where  it  had  been  hanging  on  behind,  the  passen- 
ger would  most  always  buy  it  and  enough  of  the 
name  to  wrap  it  up  in. 

He  also  discovered  the  isochronism  of  the  pen- 
dulum. He  saw  that  the  pendulum  at  certain 
seasons  of  the  year  looked  yellow  under  the  eyes, 
and  that  it  drooped  and  did  not  enter  into  its  work 
with  the  old  zest.  He  began  to  study  the  case 
with  the  aid  of  his  new  bamboo  telescope  and 
wicker- covered  microscope.  As  a  result,  in  ten 
days  he  had  the  pendulum  on  its  feet  again. 

Galileo  was  inclined  to  be  liberal  in  his  religious 
views,  and  more  especially  in  the  matter  of  the 
scriptures,  claiming  that  there  were  passages  in  the 
bible  which  did  not  literally  mean  what  the  transla- 
tor said  they  did.  This  was  where  Galileo  missed  it. 


CORD  WOOD.  27 

So  long  as  he  discovered  stars  and  isochronisms 
and  such  things  as  that  he  succeeded,  but  when  he 
began  to  fool  with  other  people's  religious  beliefs 
he  got  into  trouble.  He  was  forced  to  fly  from 
Pisa,  we  are  told  by  the  historian,  and  we  are 
assured  at  the  same  time  that  Galileo,  who  had 
always  been  far,  far  ahead  of  all  competitors  in 
other  things,  was  equally  successful  as  a  fleer. 

Galileo  received  but  60  scudi  per  year  for  his 
salary  at  Pisa,  and  a  part  of  that  he  took  in  town 
orders,  worth  only  60  cents  on  the  scudi. 


OETHUSBLAH. 

A  KECENT  BIOGKAPHICAL  NOTICE  OF  THIS  GEAND  OLD  MAN 
A  SLAVE  TO  TOBACCO. 


BILL    NYE. 


I  have  just  been  reading  James  Whitcomb  Eiley's 
response  to  "the  old  man"  at  the  annual  dinner  of 
the  Indianapolis  Literary  club,  and  his  reference  to 
Methuselah  has  awakened  in  my  mind  many  recol- 
lections and  reminiscences  of  that  grand  old 
man.  We  first  met  Methuselah  in  the  capacity  of 
a  son.  At  the  age  of  65,  Enoch  arose  one  night 
and  telephoned  his  family  physician  to  come  over 
and  assist  him  in  meeting  Methuselah.  Day  at  last 


28  BILL  NY&S 

dawned  upon  Enoch's  happy  home,  and  its  first  red 
rays  lit  up  the  still  redder  surface  of  the  little  stran- 
ger. For  three  hundred  years  Enoch  and  Methu- 
selah jogged  along  together  in  the  capacity  of  father 
and  son.  Then  Enoch  was  suddenly  cut  down.  It 
was  at  this  time  that  little  Methuselah  first  realized 
what  it  was  to  be  an  orphan.  He  could  not  at  first 
realize  that  his  father  was  dead.  He  could  not 
understand  why  Enoch,  with  no  inherited  disease, 
should  be  shuffled  out  at  the  age  of  365  years. 
But  the  doctor  said  to  Methuselah:  "My  son,  you 
are  indeed  fatherless.  I  have  done  all  I  could,  but 
it  is  useless.  I  had  told  Enoch  many  a  time  that 
if  he  went  in  swimming  before  the  ice  was  out  of 
the  creek  it  would  finally  down  him,  but  he  thought 
he  knew  better  than  I  did.  He  was  a  headstrong 
man,  Enoch  was.  He  sneered  at  me  and  alluded 
to  me  as  a  fresh  young  gosling,  because  he  was 
300  years  older  than  I  was.  He  has  received 
the  reward  of  the  willful,  and  verily  the  doom  of 
the  smart  Aleck  is  his." 

Methuselah  now  cast  about  him  for  some  occu- 
pation which  would  take  up  his  attention  and  as- 
suage his  wild,  passionate  grief  over  the  loss  of  his 
father.  He  entered  into  the  walks  of  men  and 
learned  their  ways.  It  was  at  this  time  that  he 
learned  the  pernicious  habit  of  using  tobacco.  We 
can  not  wonder  at  it  when  we  remember  that  he 


(JORDWOOD  to 

was  now  fatherless.  He  was  at  the  mercy  of  the 
coarse,  rough  world.  Possibly  he  learned  to  use 
tobacco  when  he  went  away  to  attend  business  col- 
ledge  after  the  death  of  his  father.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  the  noxious  weed  certainly  hastened  his  death, 
for  600  years  after  this  we  find  him  a  corpse ! 

Death  is  ever  a  surprise,  even  at  the  end  of  a  long 
illness  and  after  a  ripe  old  age.  To  those  who  are 
near  it  seems  abrupt ;  so  to  his  grand  children  some 
of  whom  survived  him,  his  children  having  died  of 
old  age,  the  death  of  Methuselah  came  like  a  thun- 
derbolt from  a  clear  sky. 

Methuselah  succeeded  in  cording  up  more  of  a 
record  such  as  it  was,  than  any  other  man  of  whom 
history  informs  us.  Time,  the  tomb-builder  and 
amateur  mower,  came  and  leaned  over  the  front 
fence  and  looked  at  Methuselah,  and  ran  his  thumb 
over  the  jagged  edge  of  his  scythe,  and  went  away 
whistling  a  low  refrain.  He  kept  up  this  refrain 
business  for  nearly  ten  centuries,  while  Methuselah 
continued  to  stand  out  amid  the  general  wreck  of 
men  and  nations. 

Even  as  the  young,  strong  mower  going  forth 
with  his  mower  to  mow  spareth  the  tall  and  dig- 
nified drab  hornet's  nests  and  passeth  by  on  the 
other  side,  so  time,  with  his  Waterbury  hour-glass 
and  his  overworked  hay-knife  over  his  shoulder, 
and  his  long  Mormon  whiskers  and  his  high,  sleek 


30  BILL  NY&S 

dome  of  thought,  with  its  gray  lambrequin  of  hair 
around  the  base  of  it,  mowed  all  around  Methuse- 
lah and  then  passed  on. 

Methuselah,  decorated  the  graves  of  those  who 
perished  in  a  dozen  different  wars.  He  did  not 
enlist  himself,  for  over  nine  hundred  years  of  his 
life  he  was  exempt.  He  would  go  to  the  enlisting 
place  and  offer  his  services,  and  the  officer  would 
tell  him  to  go  home  and  encourage  his  grand- 
children to  go.  Then  Methuselah  would  sit  around 
Noah's  steps,  and  smoke  and  criticise  the  conduct 
of  the  war,  also  the  conduct  of  the  enemy. 

It  is  said  of  Methuselah  that  he  never  was  the 
same  man  after  his  son  Lamech  died.  He  was 
greatly  attached  to  Lamech,  and  when  he  woke  up 
one  night  to  find  his  son  purple  in  the  face  with 
membraneous  croup  he  could  hardly  realize  that  he 
might  lose  him.  The  idea  of  losing  a  boy  who  had 
just  rounded  the  glorious  morn  of  his  777th  year 
had  never  occurred  to  him.  But  death  loves  a 
shining  mark,  and  he  garnered  little  Lammie  and 
left  Methuselah  to  moan  and  mourn  on  for  a  couple 
more  centuries  without  him. 

Methuselah  finally  got  so  that  he  couldn't  sleep 
after  4  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  he  didn't  see 
how  anyone  else  could.  The  older  he  got  and  the 
less  valuable  his  time  became  the  earlier  he  would 
rise,  so  that  he  could  get  an  early  start.  As  the 


CORDWOOD.  31 

centuries  filed  slowly  by  Methuselah  got  where  all 
he  had  to  do  was  to  shuffle  into  his  loose-fitting 
clothes,  and  rest  his  gums  on  the  top  of  a  large 
sleek-headed  cane,  and,  mutter  up  the  chimney, 
and  then  groan  and  extricate  himself  from  his 
clothes  again  and  retire.  He  arose  earlier  and 
earlier  in  the  morning,  and  muttered  more  and 
more  about  the  young  folks  sleeping  away  the  best 
of  the  day,  and  said  he  had  no  doubt  that  sleeping 
and  snoring  until  breakfast  time  helped  to  carry  off 
Lam.  But  one  day  old  Father  Time  came  along 
with  a  new  scythe,  and  he  drew  the  whetstone 
across  it  a  few  times  and  rolled  the  sleeves  of  his 
red  flannel  undergarment  up  over  his  warty  elbows, 
and  Mr.  Methuselah  passed  on  to  that  undis- 
covered country  with  a  ripe  experience  and  a  long, 
clean  record. 

We  can  almost  fancy  how  the  physicians,  who 
had  disagreed  about  his  case  all  the  way  through, 
came  and  insisted  on  a  post-mortem  examination 
to  prove  which  was  right,  and  what  was  really  the 
matter  with  him.  We  can  imagine  how  people 
went  by  shaking  their  heads  and  regretting  that 
Methuselah  should  have  tampered  with  tobacco 
when  he  knew  it  affected  his  heart. 

But  he  is  gone.  He  lived  to  see  his  own  promis- 
sory notes  rise,  flourish,  acquire  interest,  pine  away 
at  last,  and  finally  outlaw.  He  acquired  a  large 


32  &ILL  NY&S 

farm  in  the  very  heart  of  the  connty-seat,  and  re- 
fused to  move  or  to  plot  it  and  call  it  Methuselah's 
addition.  He  came  out  in  spring  regularly  for 
nine  hundred  years  after  he  got  too  old  to  work 
out  his  poll-tax  on  the  road  and  put  in  his  time 
telling  the  rising  generation  how  to  make  a  good 
road.  Meantime  other  old  people,  who  were  almost 
100  years  of  age,  moved  away  and  went  west, 
where  they  would  attract  attention  and  command 
respect.  There  was  actually  no  pleasure  in  getting 
old  around  where  Methuselah  was  and  being  or- 
dered about  and  scolded  and  kept  in  the  back- 
ground by  him. 

So  when  at  last  he  died  people  sighed  and  said : 
"Well,  it  was  better  for  him  to  die  before  he  got 
childish.  It  was  best  that  he  should  die  at  a  time 
when  he  knew  it  all.  We  can't  help  thinking  what 
an  acquisition  Methuselah  will  be  on  the  evergreen 
shore  when  he  gets  there,  with  all  his  ripe  experi- 
ence and  habits  of  early  rising." 

And  the  next  morning  after  the  funeral  Methu- 
selah's family  did  not  get  out  of  bed  till  9  o'clock. 


aORDWOOD.  33 


ON  SOME  SPRING  STYLES. 


THE  LADIES  FAVOEITE  BONNET  AND  HOSIEKY THE  SMALL 

DOG  WOKN  IN  SHADES  TO  MATCH  THE  COSTUME— 
PKEVAILING  FASHIONS  FOE  GENTLEMEN. 


BILL  NYE. 

It  is  customary  at  this  season  of  the  year  to  poke 
fun  at  the  good  clothes  of  our  friends  and  well- 
wishers,  the  ladies,  but  it  occurs  to  me  that  this 
spring  there  is  a  very  small  field  for  the  witty  and 
sarcastic  critic  of  female  attire.  There  has  not 
been  a  time  since  I  first  began  to  make  a  study  of 
this  branch  of  science  when  the  ladies  seem  to  have 
manifested  better  taste  or  sounder  judgment  in  the 
matter  of  dress. 

Even  bonnets  seem  to  be  less  grotesque  this 
season  than  heretofore,  although  the  high,  startled 
bonnet,  the  bonnet  that  may  be  characterized  as 
the  excelsior  bonnet,  is  still  retained  by  some, 
though  how  it  is  retained  has  always  been  a  mys- 
tery to  me.  Perhaps  it  holds  its  place  in  society  by 
means  of  a  long,  black  pin,  which  apparently  passes 
through  the  brain  of  the  wearer. 


M  BILL 

Black  hosiery  continues  to  be  very  popular,  I  am 
informed.  Sometimes  it  is  worn  clocked,  and  then 
again  it  is  worn  crocked.  The  crockless  black 
stocking  is  gaming  in  favor  in  our  best  circles,  I 
am  pleased  to  note.  Nothing  looks  more  mortified 
than  a  foot  that  has  been  inside  of  a  crockable 
stocking  all  through  a  long,  hot,  summer  day. 

I  am  very  glad  to  notice  that  the  effort  made  a 
few  years  ago  by  a  French  reformer  to  abolish  the 
stocking  on  the  ground  of  unhealthfulness  has  met 
with  well-merited  failure.  The  custom  of  wearing 
hosiery  is  one  that  does  great  credit  to  the  spirit  of 
American  progress,  which  cannot  be  thwarted  by 
the  puny  hand  of  foreign  interference  or  despotic 
intervention. 

Street  costumes  of  handsomely  fitting  and  unob- 
trusive shades  of  soft  and  comfortable  goods  will 
be  generally  in  favor,  and  the  beautiful  and  sym- 
metrical American  arm  with  a  neatly  fitting  sleeve 
on  the  outside  of  it  will  gladden  the  hearts  of  the 
casual  spectator  once  more. 

The  lady  with  the  acute  elbow  and  the  italicized 
clavicle  will  make  a  strong  effort  this  season  to 
abolish  the  close-fitting  and  extremely  attractive 
sleeve,  but  it  will  be  futile. 

The  small  dog  will  be  worn  this  season  in  shades 
to  match  the  costume.  For  dark  and  brown  com- 
binations in  street  dresses  the  black-and-tan  dog 


CORD  WOOD.  35 

will  be  very  much  in  favor,  while  the  black-  and- 
drab  pug  will  be  affected  by  those  wearing  these 
shades  in  dress.  Small  pugs  that  are  warranted 
not  to  bag  at  the  knees  are  commanding  a  good 
price.  Spitz  dogs  to  match  lynx  or  fox  trimmed 
garments  or  spring  wraps  are  now  being  sprinkled 
with  camphor  and  laid  aside  for  the  summer. 
Coach  dogs  of  the  spotted  variety  will  be  worn 
with  polka-dot  costumes.  Tall,  willowy  hounds 
with  wire  tails  will  be  much  affected  by  slender 
young  ladies  and  hydrophobia.  Antique  dogs  with 
weak  eyes,  asthma,  and  an  air  of  languor  will  be 
used  a  great  deal  this  season  to  decorate  lawns  and 
railroad  crossings.  Young  dogs  that  are  just  bud- 
ding into  doghood  will  be  noticed  through  the 
spring  months  trying  their  new  teeth  on  the  light 
spring  pantaloons  of  male  pedestrians. 

Styles  in  gentlemen's  clothing  have  not  materi- 
ally changed.  Lavender  pantaloons,  with  an  air  of 
settled  melancholy  and  benzine,  are  now  making 
their  appearance,  and  young  men  trying  to  eradi- 
cate the  droop  in  the  knees  of  last  summer's  gar- 
ment may  be  seen  in  their  luxurious  apartments 
most  any  calm  spring  evening. 

An  old  nail-brush,  with  a  solution  of  ammonia 
and  prussic  acid,  will  remove  traces  of  custard  pie 
from  light  shades  in  pantaloons.  This  preparation 
will  also  remove  the  pantaloons. 


36  BILL 

The  umbrella  will  be  worn  over  the  shoulder  and 
in  the  eye  of  the  passing  pedestrian,  very  much  as 
usual  on  pleasant  days,  and  left  behind  the  door  in 
a  dark  closet  on  rainy  days. 

Gentlemen  will  wear  one  pocket-handkerchief  in 
the  side  pocket,  with  the  corner  gently  emerging, 
and  another  in  the  hip  pocket,  as  they  did  last  sea- 
son, the  former  for  decorative  purposes  and  the 
latter  for  business.  This  is  a  wise  provision  and 
never  fails  to  elicit  favorable  comment. 

The  custom  of  wearing  a  few  kernels  of  roasted 
coffee  or  a  dozen  cloves  in  the  little  cigarette 
pocket  of  the  cutaway  coat  will  still  continue,  and 
the  supply  will  be  replenished  between  the  acts,  as 
heretofore. 

Straw  hats  will  be  chased  down  the  streets  this 
spring  by  the  same  gentlemen  who  chased  them 
last  spring,  and  in  some  instances  the  same  hats 
will  be  used.  Shade  trees  will  be  worn  a  little 
lower  this  summer,  and  will  therefore  succeed  in 
wiping  off  a  larger  crop  of  plug  hats,  it  is  hoped. 
Linen  dusters,  with  the  pockets  carefully  soldered 
together,  have  not  yet  made  their  appearance. 


CORD  WOOD.  37 


AN  ICHTHYOSAURUS. 

THE  VICTIMS  OF  A  PRACTICAL  JOKE  TBAMP  FIVE  DAYS 

ALONG  BITTEK  CREEK  IN  SEABCH  OF  AN  ANIMAL 

THAT  HAD  BEEN  DEAD  5,000  YEABS. 

BILL    NYE. 


Several  years  ago  I  had  the  pleasure  of  joining  a 
party  about  to  start  out  along  the  banks  of  Bitter 
creek  on  a  hunting  expedition.  The  leader  of  the 
party  was  a  young  man  who  had  recently  escaped 
from  college  with  a  large  amount  of  knowledge 
which  he  desired  to  experiment  with  on  the  people 
of  the  far  west.  He  had  heard  that  there  was  an 
ichthyosaurus  up  somewhere  along  the  west  side 
of  Bitter  creek,  and  he  wanted  us  to  go  along  and 
help  him  to  find  it. 

I  had  been  in  the  west  some  eight  or  nine  years 
then  and  I  had  never  seen  an  ichthyosaurus  myself, 
but  I  thought  the  young  man  must  know  his  busi- 
ness, so  I  got  out  my  Winchester  and  went  along 
with  the  group. 

We  tramped  over  the  pale,  ashy,  glaring,  staring 
stretch  of  desolation,  through  burning,  quivering 


38  BILL 

days  of  monotony  and  sage  brush  and  alkali  water 
and  aching  eyes  and  parched  and  bleeding  lips  and 
nostrils  cut  through  and  eaten  by  the  sharp  alka- 
line air,  mentally  depressed  and  physically  worn 
out,  but  cheered  on  and  braced  up  by  the  light  and 
joyous  manner  of  the  ever-hopful  James  Trilobite 
Eton  of  Concord. 

James  Trilobite  Eton  of  Concord  never  moaned, 
never  gigged  back  or  shed  a  hot,  remorseful  tear  in 
this  powdry,  hungry  waste  of  gray,  parched  ruin. 
No  regret  came  forth  from  his  lips  in  the  midst  of 
this  mighty  cemetery,  this  ghastly  potter's  field  for 
all  that  nature  had  ever  reared  that  was  too  poor  to 
bear  its  own  funeral  expenses. 

Now  and  then  a  lean,  soiled  gray  coyote,  without 
sufficient  moral  courage  to  look  a  dead  mule  in  the 
hind  foot,  slipped  across  the  horizon  like  a  dirty 
phantom  and  faded  into  the  hot  and  tremulous  at- 
mosphere. We  scorned  such  game,  as  that  and 
trudged  on,  cheered  by  the  hope  that  seemed  to 
spring  eternal  in  the  breast  of  James  Trilobite 
Eton  of  Concord. 

Four  days  we  wallowed  through  the  unchanging 
desolation.  Four  nights  we  went  through  the  mo- 
tions of  slumbering  on  the  arid  bosom  of  the  wasted 
earth.  On  the  fifth  day  James  Trilobite  Eton  said 
we  were  now  getting  near  the  point  where  we  would 
find  what  we  sought.  On  we  pressed  through  the 


COED  WOOD.  39 

keen,  rough  blades  of  the  seldom  bunch-grass,  over 
the  shifting,  yellow  sand  and  the  greenish  gray  of 
the  bad-land  soil  which  never  does  anything  but 
sit  around  through  the  accumulating  centuries  and 
hold  the  world  together,  a  kind  of  powdery  poison 
that  delights  to  creep  into  the  nostrils  of  the  pil- 
grim and  steal  away  his  brains,  or  when  moistened 
by  a  little  snow  to  accumulate  around  the  feet  of 
the  pilgrim  or  on  the  feet  of  the  pilgrim's  mule  till 
he  has  the  most  of  an  unsurveyed  "forty"  on  each 
foot,  and  the  casual  observer  is  cheered  by  the 
novel  sight  of  one  homestead  striving  to  jump  an- 
other. 

Toward  evening  James  Trilobite  Eton  gave  a 
wild  shriek  of  joy  and  ran  to  us  from  the  bed  of  an 
old  creek,  where  he  had  found  an  ichthyosaurus. 
The  animal  was  dead !  Not  only  that,  but  it  had 
been  dead  a  long,  long  time ! 

James  Milton  Sherrod  said  that  "if  a  college 
education  was  of  no  more  use  to  a  man  than  that 
he,  for  one,  allowed  that  his  boy  would  have  to 
grope  through  life  with  an  academical  education, 
and  very  little  of  it." 

I  uncocked  my  gun  and  went  back  to  camp  a 
sadder  and  madder  man,  and,  though  years  have 
come  and  gone,  I  am  still  irritable  when  I  think  of 
the  five  days  we  tramped  along  Bitter  creek 


40  BILL 

searching  for  an  animal  that  was  no  longer  alive, 
and  our  guide  knew  it  before  he  started. 

I  ventured  to  say  to  J.  Trilobite  Eton  that  night 
as  we  all  sat  together  in  the  gloaming  discussing 
whether  he  should  be  taken  home  with  us  in  the 
capacity  of  a  guide  or  as  a  remains,  that  it  seemed 
to  me  a  man  ought  to  have  better  sense  than  to 
wear  his  young  life  away  trying  to  have  fun  with 
his  superiors  in  that  way. 

"Why,  blame  it  all,"  says  James,  "what  did  you 
expect?  You  ought  to  know  yourself  that  that 
animal  is  extinct!" 

"Extinck!"  says  James  Milton  Sherrod,  in  shrill, 
angry  tones.  "I  should  say  he  was  extinck.  That's 
what  we're  kickin'  about.  What  gallded  me  was 
that  you  should  of  waited  till  the  old  cuss  was  ex- 
tinck before  you  come  to  us  like  a  man  and  told  us 
about  it.  You  pull  us  through  the  sand  for  a  week 
and  blister  our  heels  and  condemb  near  kill  us,  and 
all  the  time  you  know  that  the  blame  brute  is 
layin'  there  in  the  hot  sun  gittin'  more  and  more 
extinck  every  minute.  Fun  is  fun,  and  I  like  a 
little  nonsense  now  and  then  just  as  well  as  you 
do,  but  I'll  be  eternally  banished  to  Bitter  creek  if 
I  think  it's  square  or  light  or  white  to  play  it  on 
your  friends  this  kind  of  a  way. 

"You  claim  that  the  animal  has  been  dead  goin* 
on  five  thousand  years,  or  some  such  thing  as  that, 


CORD  WOOD  ±1 

and  try  to  get  out  of  it  that  way,  but  long  as  you 
knew  it  and  we  didn't  it  shows  that  you're  a  low 
cuss  not  to  speak  of  it. 

"What  difference  does  it  make  to  us,  I  say, 
whether  this  brute  was  or  was  not  dead  and  swelled 
up  like  a  pizen'd  steer  long  before  Nore  got  his 
zoologickle  show  together?  We  didn't  know  it. 
We  haven't  seen  the  Salt  Lake  papers  for  weeks. 
You  use  your  edjecation  to  fool  people  with.  My 
opinion  is  that  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  you 
will  wake  up  and  find  yourself  in  the  bottom  of  an 
untimely  grave. 

"You  bring  us  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  to  look 
at  an  old  bone  pile  all  tramped  into  the  ground  and 
then  say  that  the  animal  is  extinck.  That's  a  great 
way  to  talk  to  an  old  man  like  me,  a  man  old 
enough  to  be  your  grandfather.  Probly  you 
cacklate  that  it  is  a  rare  treat  for  an  old-timer  like 
me  to  waller  through  from  Green  River  to  the  Yal- 
lerstone  and  then  hear  a  young  kangaroo  with  a 
moth-eaten  eyebrow  under  his  nose  burst  forth  into 
a  rollicking  laugh  and  say  that  the  animal  we've 
been  trailin'  for  five  days  is  extinck. 

"I  just  want  to  say  to  you,  James  Trilobite  Eton, 
and  I  say  it  for  your  good  and  I  say  it  with  no 
prejudice  against  you,  for  I  want  to  see  you  succeed, 
that  if  this  ever  happens  agin  and  you  are  the 
party  to  blame  you  will  wake  up  with  a  wild  start 


42  BILL 

on  the  follerin'  day  and  find  yourself  a  good  deal 
extincker  than  this  here  old  busted  lizard  is." 


I^EWAI^DED. 


STYLE  OF  SCHOOL  LITEEATUEE  KNOWN  THIETY  YEAES  AGO. 


ONE  OF  BILL  NYE's  SELECTIONS,  WEITTEN  BY  HIMSELF 

AEEANGED  WITH  SPECIAL   EEFEEENCE   TO    THE   MAT- 
TEE  OF  CHOICE,  DELICATE  AND  DIFFICULT  WOEDS. 


One  day  as  George  Oswald  was  going  to  his  tasks, 
and  while  passing  through  the  wood,  he  spied  a 
tall  man  approaching  in  an  opposite  direction  along 
the  highway. 

"Ah,"  thought  George,  in  a  low,  mellow  tone  of 
voice,  "whom  have  we  here?" 

"Good  morning,  my  fine  fellow,"  exclaimed  the 
stranger,  pleasantly.  "Do  you  reside  in  this  local- 
ity?" 

"Indeed  I  do,"  retorted  George,  cheerily  drop- 
ping his  cap.  "In  yonder  cottage,  near  the  glen, 


CORDWOOD.  43 

my  widowed  mother  and  her  thirteen  children  dwell 
with  me." 

"And  how  did  your  papa  die?"  asked  the  man, 
as  he  thoughtfully  stood  on  the  other  foot  awhile. 

"Alas, sir,"  said  George,  as  a  large  hot  tear  stole 
down  his  pale  cheek  and  fell  with  a  loud  report  on 
the  warty  surface  of  his  bare  foot,  "he  was  lost  at 
sea  in  a  bitter  gale.  The  good  ship  foundered  two 
years  ago  last  Christmastide,  and  father  was  foun- 
dered ~at  the  same  time.  No  one  knew  of  the  loss 
of  the  ship  and  that  the  crew  was  drowned  until  the 
next  spring,  and  it  was  then  too  late." 

"And  what  is  your  age,  my  fine  fellow?"  quoth 
the  stranger. 

"If  I  live  until  next  October,"  said  the  boy,  in  a 
declamatory  tone  of  voice  suitable  for  a  Second 
Reader,  "I  will  be  7  years  of  age." 

A   LAEGE  FAMILY  OF  CHILDBEN. 

"And  who  provides  for  your  mother  and  her  large 
family  of  children?"  queried  the  man. 

"Indeed,  I  do,  sir,"  replied  George,  in  a  shrill 
tone.  "I  toil,  oh,  so  hard,  sir,  for  we  are  very, 
very  poor,  and  since  my  elder  sister,  Ann,  was 
married  and  brought  her  husband  home  to  live  with 
us  I  have  to  toil  more  assidously  than  heretofore." 

"And  by  what  means  do  you  obtain  a  liveli- 
hood?" exclaimed  the  man,  in  slowly  measured 
and  grammatical  words. 


44:  BILL  NY&S 

"By  digging  wells,  kind  sir/'  replied  George, 
picking  up  a  tired  ant  as  he  spoke  and  stroking  it 
on  the  back.  "I  have  a  good  education,  and  so  I 
am  enabled  to  dig  wells  as  well  as  a  man.  I  do  this 
daytimes  and  take  in  washing  at  night.  In  this 
way  I  am  enabled  to  maintain  our  family  in  a  pre- 
carious manner ;  but,  oh,  sir,  should  my  other  sisters 
marry,  I  fear  that  some  of  my  brothers-in-law  would 
have  to  suffer." 

"You  are  indeed  a  brave  lad,"  exclaimed  the 
stranger,  as  he  repressed  a  smile.  "And  do  you 
not  at  times  become  very  weary  and  wish  for  other 
ways  of  passing  your  time?" 

"Indeed  I  do, sir,"  said  the  lad.  "I  would  fain 
run  and  romp  and  be  gay  like  other  boys,  but  I 
must  engage  in  constant  manual  exercise,  or  we 
will  have  no  bread  to  eat  and  I  have  not  seen  a  pie 
since  papa  perished  in  the  moist  and  moaning  sea." 

SAVED  FKOM  A  HURRIED  GRAVE. 

"And  what  if  I  were  to  tell  you  that  your  papa 
did  not  perish  at  sea,  but  was  saved  from  a  hurried 
grave?"  asked  the  stranger  in  pleasing  tones. 

"Ah,  sir,"  exclaimed  George,  in  a  genteel  man- 
ner, again  doffing  his  cap.  "I'm  too  polite  to  tell 
you  what  I  would  say,  and  beside,  sir,  you  are 
much  larger  than  I  am." 

"But, my  brave  lad,"  said  the  man  in  low  musi- 


CORD  WOOD.  45 

cal  tones,  "do  you  not  know  me,  Georgie.  Oh, 
George!" 

"I  must  say,"  replied  George,  "that  you  have 
the  advantage  of  me.  Whilst  I  may  have  met  you 
before,  I  can  not  at  this  moment  place  you,  sir." 

"My  son!  oh,  my  son!"  murmured  the  man,  at 
the  same  time  taking  a  large  strawberry  mark  out 
of  the  valise  and  showing  it  to  the  lad.  "Do  you 
not  recognize  your  parent  on  your  father's  side? 
When  our  good  ship  went  to  the  bottom,  all  per- 
ished save  me.  I  swam  several  miles  through  the 
billows,  and  at  last,  utterly  exhausted,  gave  up  all 
hope  of  life.  Suddenly  a  bright  idea  came  to  me 
and  I  walked  out  of  the  sea  and  rested  myself. 

"And  now,  my  brave  boy,"  exclaimed  the  man 
with  great  glee,  "see  what  I  have  brought  for  you." 
It  was  but  the  work  of  a  moment  to  unclasp  from 
a  shawl  strap,  which  he  held  in  his  hand,  and  pre- 
sent to  George's  astonished  gaze,  a  large  40  cent 
watermelon,  which  he  had  brought  with  him  from 
the  Orient. 

"Ah,"  said  George,  "this  is  indeed  a  glad  sur- 
prise. Albeit,  how  can  I  ever  repay  you?" — Bill 
Nye  in  Boston  Globe. 


46  BILL  NYE^S 


BILL  RYE  CONDOLES  WUPH- CLEVELAND. 

SUEPEISE  EXPEESSED  THAT  THE  PEESIDENT  SHOULD  TAKE 

A   MOTHEE-IN-LAW   INTO  HIS  CABINET   AND   ADD 

HOUSEKEEPING  TO  HIS  OTHEE  AGONY. 

HUDSON,  Wis.,  June  3,  1886. 
The  Hon.  Grover  Cleveland,  Washington,  D.  C.: 

MY  DEAE  SIE:  You  have  now  assumed  anew 
duty  and  taken  upon  yourself  an  additional  respon- 
sibility. Not  content  with  the  great  weight  of 
national  affairs,  sufficient  to  crush  any  other  pachy- 
derm, you  have  cheerfully  and  almost  gleefully 
become  a  married  man.  While  I  cannot  agree 
with  you  politically,  Grover,  I  am  forced  to  admire 
your  courage. 

This  morning  a  new  life  opens  out  to  you — the 
life  of  a  married  man.  It  is  indeed  a  humiliating 
situation.  To  be  a  president  of  the  United  States, 
the  roustabout  of  a  free  people,  is  a  trying  situa- 


CORDWOOD.  47 

tion ;  but  to  be  a  newly  married  president,  married 
in  the  full  glare  of  official  life,  with  the  eye  of  a 
divided  constituency  upon  you,  is  to  place  yourself 
where  nerve  is  absolutely  essential. 

I,  too,  am  married,  but  not  under  such  trying 
circumstances.  Others  have  been  married  and  still 
lived,  but  it  has  remained  for  you,  Mr.  President, 
young  as  you  are,  to  pose  as  a  newly  wedded  presi- 
dent and  to  take  your  new  mother-in-law  into  the 
cabinet  with  you.  For  this  reason,  I  say  freely 
that  to  walk  a  slack  rope  across  the  moist  brow  of 
Niagara  and  carry  a  nervous  man  in  a  wheelbarrow 
sinks  into  a  mere  commonplace.  Daniel  playing 
"tag"  with  a  denful  of  half-starved  lions  becomes  a 
historic  cipher,  and  the  Hebrew  children,  sitting 
on  a  rosy  bed  of  red-hot  clinkers  in  the  fiery  fur- 
nace, are  almost  forgotten. 

With  a  large  wad  of  civil  service  wedged  in 
among  your  back  teeth,  a  larger  fragment,  perhaps, 
than  you  were  prepared  to  masticate  when  you  bit 
it  off;  with  an  agonized  southern  democracy  and  a 
clamorous  northern  constituency ;  with  disappoint- 
ment poorly  concealed  among  your  friends  and 
hilarity  openly  expressed  by  your  enemies ;  with  the 
snarl  of  the  vanquished  Mr.  Davis,  who  was  at  one 
time  a  sort  of  president  himself,  as  he  rolls  up 
future  majorities  for  your  foes;  with  a  lot  of  sharp- 
witted  journalists  walking  all  over  you  every  twen- 


48  BILL 

ty-four  hours  and  climbing  up  your  stalwart  frame 
with  their  telegraph  repair  boots  on,  I  am  surprised, 
Grover,  honestly,  as  between  man  and  man,  that 
you  should  have  trieil  to  add  housekeeping  to  all 
this  other  agony.  Had  you  been  young  and  tender 
under  the  wings  I  might  have  understood  it,  but 
you  must  admit,  in  the  quiet  and  sanctity  of  your 
own  home,  Grover,  that  you  are  no  gosling.  You 
have  arrived  at  man's  estate.  You  have  climbed 
the  barbed- wire  fence  which  separates  the  fluff  and 
bloom  and  blossom  and  bumble-bees  of  impetuous 
youth  from  the  yellow  fields  and  shadowy  orchards 
of  middle  hie.  You  now  stand  in  the  full  glare  of 
life's  meridian.  You  are  entering  upon  a  new  ex- 
perience. Possibly  you  think  that  because  you  are 
president  the  annoyances  peculiar  to  the  life  of  a 
new,  green  groom  will  not  reach  you.  Do  not  fool 
yourself  in  this  manner.  Others  have  made  the 
same  mistake.  Position,  wealth  and  fame  cannot 
shut  out  the  awkward  and  trying  circumstances 
which  attend  the  married  man  even  as  the  sparks 
are  prone  to  fly  upward. 

It  will  seem  odd  to  you  at  first,  Mr.  President, 
after  the  affairs  of  the  nation  have  been  put  aside 
for  the  day  and  the  government  fire  proof  safe 
locked  up  for  the  night,  to  go  up  to  your  boudoir  and 
converse  with  a  bride,  with  one  corner  of  her  mouth 
full  of  pins.  A  man  may  write  a  pretty  fair  mes- 


CORD  WOOD.  49 

sage  to  congress,  one  that  will  be  accepted  and 
printed  all  over  the  country,  and  yet  he  may  not  be 
fitted  to  hold  a  conversation  with  one  corner  of  a 
woman's  mouth  while  the  other  is  filled  with  pins. 
To  some  men  it  is  given  to  be  great  as  statesmen, 
while  to  others  it  is  given  to  be  fluent  conversa- 
tionalists under  these  circumstances. 

Mr.  President,  I  may  be  taking  a  great  liberty  in 
writing  to  you  and  touching  upon  your  private 
affairs,  but  I  noticed  that  everybody  else  was  doing 
it  and  so  I  have  nerved  myself  up  to  write  you, 
having  once  been  a  married  man  myself,  though 
not,  as  I  said,  under  the  same  circumstances. 
When  I  was  married  I  was  only  a  plain  justice  of 
the  peace,  plodding  quietly  along  and  striving  to  do 
my  duty.  You  was  then  sheriff  of  your  county. 
Little  did  we  think  in  those  days  that  now  you 
would  be  a  freshly  married  president  and  I  the 
author  of  several  pieces  which  have  been  printed 
in  the  papers.  Little  did  we  think  then,  when  I 
was  a  justice  of  the  peace  in  Wyoming  and  you  a 
sheriff  in  New  York,  that  to-day  your  timothy 
lawn  would  be  kicked  all  to  pieces  by  your  admir- 
ing constituents,  while  I  would  be  known  and  loved 
wherever  the  English  language  is  tampered  with. 

So  we  have  risen  together,  you  to  a  point  from 
which  you  may  be  easily  observed  and  flayed  alive 
by  the  newspapers,  while  I  am  the  same  pleasant, 


50  BILL 

unassuming,  gentlemanly  friend  of  the  poor  that  I 
was  when  only  a  justice  of  the  peace  and  compara- 
tively unknown. 

I  cannot  close  this  letter  without  expressing  a 
wish  that  your  married  life  may  be  a  joyous  one,  as 
the  paper  at  Laramie  has  said,  "and  that  no  cloud 
may  ever  come  to  mar  the  horizon  of  your  wedded 
bliss."  (This  sentence  is  not  my  own.  I  copy  it 
verbatim  from  a  wedding  notice  of  my  own  written 
by  a  western  journalist  who  is  now  at  the  Old 
Woman's  Home.) 

Mr.  President,  I  hope  you  will  not  feel  that 
I  have  been  too  forward  in  writing  to  you  personal- 
ly over  my  own  name.  I  mean  to  do  what  is  best 
for  you.  You  can  truly  say  that  all  I  have  ever 
done  in  this  way  has  been  for  your  good.  I  speak 
in  a  plain  way  sometimes,  but  I  don't  beat  about 
the  bush.  I  see  that  you  do  not  want  to  have  any 
engrossed  bills  sent  to  you  for  a  couple  of  weeks. 

That's  the  way  I  was.  I  told  all  my  creditors  to 
withhold  their  engrossed  bills  during  my  honey- 
moon, as  I  was  otherwise  engrossed.  This  remark 
made  me  a  great  many  friends  and  added  to  my 
large  circle  of  creditors.  It  was  afterward  printed 
in  a  foreign  paper  and  explained  in  a  supplement  of 
eight  pages. 

We  are  all  pretty  well  here  at  home.  I  may  go 
to  Washington  this  fall  if  I  can  sell  a  block  of  stock 


CORDWOOD.  51 

in  the  Pauper's  Dream,  a  rich  gold  claim  of  mine 
on  Elk  mountain.  It  is  a  very  rich  claim,  but 
needs  capital  to  develop  it.  (This  remark  is  not 
original  with  me.  I  quote  from  an  exchange.) 

If  I  do  come  over  to  Washington  do  not  let  that 
make  any  difference  in  your  plans.  If  I  thought 
your  wife  would  send  out  to  the  neighbors  and  bor- 
row dishes  and  such  things  on  my  account  I  would 
not  go  a  step. 

Just  stick  your  head  out  of  the  window  and 
whistle  as  soon  as  the  cabinet  is  gone  and  I  will 
come  up  there  and  spend  the  evening. 

Eemember  that  I  have  not  grown  cold  toward 
you  just  because  you  have  married.  You  will  find 
me  the  kind  of  a  friend  who  will  not  desert  you  just 
when  you  are  in  trouble.  Yours,  as  heretofore, 

Bill  Nye. 

P.  S. — I  send  you  to-day  a  card-receiver.  It 
looks  like  silver.  Do  not  let  your  wife  bear  on  too 
hard  when  she  polishes  it.  I  was  afraid  you  might 
try  to  start  into  keeping  house  without  a  card-re- 
ceiver, so  I  bought  -this  yesterday.  When  I  got 
married  I  forgot  to  buy  a  card-receiver,  and  I  guess 
we  would  have  frozen  to  death  before  we  could 
have  purchased  one,  but  friends  were  more  thought- 
ful, and  there  were  nine  of  them  among  the  gifts. 
If  you  decide  that  it  would  not  be  proper  for  you 
to  receive  presents,  you  may  return  the  card  re- 


52 


BILL  NY&S 


ceiver  to  me,  or  put  it  in  the  cellar-way  till  I  come 

over  there  this  fall. 

B.  N. 


COED  WOOD.  53 

DOUBT  AS  TO    f?IS  (CONDITION. 

Harry — I  hear  that  you  have  lost  your  father. 
Allow  me  to  express  my  sympathy. 

Jack  (with  a  sigh) — Thank  you.  Yes,  he  has 
gone ;  hut  the  event  was  expected  for  a  long  time, 
and  the  blow  was  consequently  less  severe  than  if 
it  had  not  been  looked  for. 

H. — His  property  was  large? 

J. — Yes ;  something  like  a  quarter  of  a  million. 

H. — I  heard  that  his  intellect,  owing  to  his  ill- 
ness, was  somewhat  feeble  during  his  latter  years. 
Is  there  any  probability  of  the  will  being  contested? 

J. — No;  father  was  quite  sane  when  he  made 
his  will.  He  left  everything  to  me. 


©YGLONBS. 


We  were  riding  along  on  the  bounding  train 
yesterday,  and  some  one  spoke  of  the  free  and 
democratic  way  that  people  in  this  country  got 
acquainted  with  each  other  while  traveling.  Then 
we  got  to  talking  about  railway  sociability  and 
railway  etiquette,  when  a  young  man  from  East 


54  BILL  NY&S 

Jasper,  who  had  wildly  jumped  and  grabbed  his 
valise  every  time  the  train  hesitated,  said  that  it 
was  queer  what  railway  travel  would  do  in  the  way 
of  throwing  people  together.  He  said  that  in 
Nebraska  once  he  and  a  large,  corpulent  gentle- 
man, both  total  strangers,  were  thrown  together 
while  trying  to  jump  a  washout,  and  an  intimacy 
sprang  up  between  them  that  had  ripened  into  open 
hostility. 

From  that  we  got  to  talking  about  natural  phe- 
nomena and  storms.  I  spoke  of  the  cyclone  with 
some  feeling  and  a  little  bitterness,  perhaps,  briefly 
telling  my  own  experience,  and  making  the  storm 
as  loud  and  wet  and  violent  as  possible. 

Then  a  gentleman  from  Kansas,  named  George  L. 
Murdock,  an  old  cattleman,  was  telling  of  a  cyclone 
that  came  across  his  range  two  years  ago  last  Sep- 
tember. The  sky  was  clear  to  begin  with,  and  then 
all  at  once,  as  Mr.  Murdock  states,  a  little  cloud  no 
larger  than  a  man's  hand  might  have  been  seen. 
It  moved  toward  the  southwest  gently,  with  its 
hands  in  its  pockets  for  a  few  moments,  and  then 
Mr.  Murdock  discovered  that  it  was  of  a  pale-green 
color,  about  sixteen  hands  high,  with  dark-blue  mane 
and  tail.  About  a  mile  from  where  he  stood  the  cy- 
clone, with  great  force,  swooped  down  and,  with  a 
muffled  roar,  swept  a  quarter-section  of  land  out 
from  under  a  heavy  mortgage  without  injuring  the 


COED  WOOD  55 

mortgage  in  the  least.  He  says  that  people  came 
for  miles  the  following  day  to  see  the  mortgage, 
still  on  file  at  the  office  of  the  register  of  deeds  and 
just  as  good  as  ever. 

Then  a  gentleman  named  Bean,  of  western  Min- 
nesota, a  man  who  went  there  in  an  early  day  and 
homesteaded  it  when  his  nearest  neighbor  was  fifty 
miles  away,  spoke  of  a  cyclone  that  visited  his 
county  before  the  telegraph  or  railroad  had  pene- 
trated that  part  of  the  state. 

Mr.  Bean  said  it  was  very  clear  up  to  the  mo- 
ment that  he  noticed  a  cloud  in  the  northwest  no 
larger  than  a  man's  hand.  It  sauntered  down  in  a 
southwesterly  direction  like  a  cyclone  that  had  all 
summer  to  do  its  chores  in.  Then  it  gave  two 
quick  snorts  and  a  roar,  wiped  out  of  existence  all 
the  farm  buildings  he  had,  sucked  the  well  dry, 
soured  all  the  milk  in  the  milk  house,  and  spread 
desolation  all  over  that  quarter-section.  But  Mr. 
Bean  said  that  the  most  remarkable  thing  he  re- 
membered was  this :  He  had  dug  about  a  pint  of 
angle  worms  that  morning,  intending  to  go  over  to 
the  lake  toward  evening  and  catch  a  few  perch. 
But  when  the  cyclone  came  it  picked  up  those 
angle  worms  and  drove  them  head  first  through  his 
new  grindstone  without  injuiring  the  worms  or  im- 
pairing the  grindstone.  He  would  have  had  the 
grindstone  photographed,  he  said,  if  the  angle 


5(5  BILL  NY&S 

worms  could  have  been  kept  still  long  enough.  He 
said  that  they  were  driven  just  far  enough  through 
to  hang  on  the  other  side  like  a  lambrequin. 

The  cyclone  is  certainly  a  wonderful  phenomenon, 
its  movements  are  so  erratic,  and  in  direct  violation 
of  all  known  rules. 

Mr.  Louis  P.  Barker  of  northern  Iowa  was  also 
on  the  car,  and  he  described  a  cyclone  that  he  saw 
in  the  '70s  along  in  September  at  the  close  of  a  hot 
but  clear  day.  The  first  intimation  that  Mr.  Bar- 
ker had  of  an  approaching  storm  was  a  small  cloud 
no  larger  than  a  man's  hand  which  he  discovered 
moving  slowly  toward  the  southwest  with  a  gyra- 
tory movement.  It  then  appeared  to  be  a  funnel- 
shaped  cloud  which  passed  along  near  the  surface 
of  the  ground  with  its  apex  now  and  then  lightly 
touching  a  barn  or  a  well,  and  pulling  it  out  by  the 
roots.  It  would  then  bound  lightly  into  the  air 
and  spit  on  its  hands.  What  he  noticed  most  care- 
fully on  the  following  day  was  the  wonderful 
evidences  of  its  powerful  suction.  It  sucked  a 
milch  cow  absolutely  dry,  pulled  all  the  water  out 
of  his  cistern,  and  then  went  around  to  the  waste- 
water  pipe  that  led  from  the  bath-room  and  drew  a 
2-year-old  child,  who  was  taking  a  bath  at  the  time, 
clear  down  through  the  two-inch  waste-pipe,  a  dis- 
tance of  150  feet.  He  had  two  inches  of  the  pipe 
with  him  and  a  lock  of  hair  from  the  child's  head. 


CORD  WOOD.  57 

It  is  such  circumstances  as  these,  coming  to  us 
from  the  mouths  of  eye-witnesses,  that  leads  us  to 
exclaim :  How  prolific  is  nature  and  how  wonder- 
ful are  all  her  works — including  poor,  weak  man ! 
Man,  who  comes  into  the  world  clothed  in  a  little 
brief  authority,  perhaps,  and  nothing  else  to  speak 
of.  He  rises  up  in  the  morning,  prevaricates,  and 
dies.  Where  are  our  best  liars  to-day?  Look  for 
them  where  you  will  and  you  will  find  that  they 
are  passing  away.  Go  into  the  cemetery  and  there 
you  will  find  them  mingling  with  the  dust,  but 
striving  still  to  perpetuate  their  business  by  mark- 
ing their  tombs  with  a  gentle  prevarication,  chiseled 
in  enduring  stone. 

I  have  heard  it  intimated  by  people  who  seemed 
to  know  what  they  were  talking  about  that  truth  is 
mighty  and  will  prevail,  but  I  do  not  see  much 
show  for  her  till  the  cyclone  season  is  over. 

SHE 


The  earth  is  that  body  in  the  solar  system  which 
most  of  my  readers  now  reside  upon,  and  which 
some  of  them,  I  regret  to  say,  modestly  derire  to 
own  and  control,  forgetting  that  the  earth  is  the 
Lord's,  and  the  fullness  thereof.  Some  men  do  not 
care  who  owns  the  earth  so  long  as  they  get  the  full- 
ness. 

The  earth  is  500,000,000  years  of  age,  according 


58  BILL 

to  Prof.  Proctor,  but  she  doesn't  look  it  to  me. 
The  Duke  of  Argyll  maintains  that  she  is  10,000,- 
000  years  old  last  August,  but  what  does  an  ordin- 
ary duke  know  about  these  things?  So  far  as  I 
am  concerned  I  will  put  Proctor's  memory  against 
that  of  any  low-priced  duke  that  I  have  ever  seen. 

Newton  claimed  that  the  earth  would  gradually 
dry  up  and  become  porous,  and  that  water  would 
at  last  become  a  curiosity.  Many  beleive  this  and 
are  rapidly  preparing  their  systems  by  a  rigid  course 
of  treatment,  so  that  they  can  live  for  years  with- 
out the  use  of  water  internally  or  externally. 

Other  scientists  who  have  sat  up  nights  to  mon- 
key with  the  solar  system,  and  thereby  shattered 
their  nervous  systems,  claim  that  the  earth  is  get- 
ting top-heavy  at  the  north  pole,  and  that  one  of 
these  days  while  we  are  thinking  of  something  else, 
the  great  weight  of  accummulated  ice,  snow,  and 
the  vast  accummulation  of  second-hand  arctic  relief 
expeditions,  will  jerk  the  earth  out  of  its  present 
position  with  so  much  spontaneity,  and  in  such  an 
extremely  forthwith  manner,  that  many  people  will 
be  permanently  strabismused  and  much  bric-a-brac 
will  be  for  sale  at  a  great  sacrifice.  This  may  or 
may  not  be  true.  I  have  not  been  up  in  the  arctic 
regions  to  investigate  its  truth  or  falsity,  though 
there  seems  to  be  a  growing  sentiment  throughout 
the  country  in  favor  of  my  going.  A  great  many 


CORD  WOOD.  59 

people  during  the  past  year  have  written  me  and 
given  me  their  consent. 

If  I  could  take  about  twenty  good,  picked  men, 
and  go  up  there  for  the  summer,  instead  of  bring- 
ing back  twenty  picked  men,  I  wouldn't  mind  the 
trip,  and  I  feel  that  we  really  ought  to  have  a  larger 
colony  on  ice  in  that  region  than  we  now  have. 

The  earth  is  composed  of  land  and  water.  Some 
of  the  water  has  large  chunks  of  ice  in  it.  The 
earth  revolves  around  its  own  axle  once  in  twenty- 
four  hours,  though  it  seems  to  revolve  faster  than 
that,  and  to  wobble  a  good  deal  during  the  holidays. 
Nothing  tickles  the  earth  more  than  to  confuse  a 
man  when  he  is  coming  home  late  at  night,  and 
then  to  rise  up  suddenly  and  hit  him  in  the  back 
with  a  town  lot.  People  who  think  there  is  no  fun 
or  relaxation  among  the  heavenly  bodies  certainly 
have  not  studied  their  habits.  Even  the  moon  is 
a  humorist. 

A  friend  of  mine,  who  was  returning  late  at  night 
from  a  regular  meeting  of  the  Society  for  the 
Amelioration  of  the  Hot  Scotch,  said  that  the 
earth  rose  up  suddenly  in  front  of  him,  and  hit  him 
with  a  right  of  way,  and  as  he  was  about  to  rise  up 
again  he  was  stunned  by  a  terrific  blow  between 
the  shoulder  blades  with  an  old  land  grant  that  he 
thought  had  lapsed  years  ago.  When  he  staggered 
to  his  feet  he  found  that  the  moon,  in  order  to  add 


60  BILL 

to  his  confusion,  had  gone  down  in  front  of  him, 
and  risen  again  behind  him,  with  her  thumb  on  her 
nose. 

So  I  say,  without  fear  of  successful  contradic- 
tion, that  if  you  do  not  think  that  planets  and  orbs 
and  one  thing  and  another  have  fun  on  the  quiet 
you  are  grossly  ignorant  of  their  habits. 

The  earth  is  about  half  way  between  Mercury 
and  Saturn  in  the  matter  of  density.  Mercury  is 
of  about  the  specific  gravity  of  iron,  while  that  of 
Saturn  corresponds  with  that  of  cork  in  the  matter 
of  density  and  specific  gravity.  The  earth,  of 
course,  does  not  compare  with  Mercury  in  the 
matter  of  solidity,  yet  it  is  amply  firm  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes.  A  negro  who  fell  out  of  the  tower 
of  a  twelve-story  building  while  trying  to  clean  the 
upper  window  by  drinking  a  quart  of  alcohol  and 
then  breathing  hard  on  the  glass,  says  that  he  re- 
gards the  earth  as  perfectly  solid,  and  safe  to  do 
business  on  for  years  to  come.  He  claims  that 
those  who  maintain  that  the  earth's  crust  is  only 
2,500  miles  in  thickness  have  not  thoroughly  tested 
the  matter  by  a  system  of  practical  experiments. 

The  poles  of  the  earth  are  merely  imaginary.  I 
hate  to  print  this  statement  an  a  large  paper  in 
such  a  way  as  to  injure  the  reputation  of  great 
writers  on  this  subject  who  still  cling  to  the  theory 
that  the  earth  revolves  upon  large  poles,  and  that 


CORD  WOOD.  61 

the  aurora  borealis  is  but  the  reflection  from  a  hot 
box  at  the  north  pole,  but  I  am  here  to  tell  the 
truth,  and  if  my  readers  think  it  disagreeable  to 
read  the  truth,  what  must  be  my  anguish  who  have 
to  tell  it  ?  The  mean  diameter  of  the  earth  is  7,- 
916  English  statute  miles,  but  the  actual  diameter 
from  pole  to  pole  is  a  still  meaner  diameter,  being 
7,899  miles,  while  the  equatorial  diameter  is  7,925^ 
miles. 

The  long  and  patient  struggle  of  our  earnest  and 
tireless  geographers  and  savants  in  past  years  in 
order  to  obtain  these  figures  and  have  them  exact, 
few  can  fully  realize.  The  long  and  thankless  job 
of  measuring  the  diameter  of  the  earth,  no  matter 
what  the  weather  might  be,  away  from  home  and 
friends,  footsore  and  weary,  still  plodding  on,  fa- 
tigued but  determined  to  know  the  mean  diameter 
of  the  earth,  even  if  it  took  a  leg,  measuring  on  for 
thousands  of  weary  miles,  and  getting  farther  and 
farther  away  from  home,  and  then  forgetting,  per- 
haps, how  many  thousand  miles  they  had  gone,  and 
being  compelled  to  go  back  and  measure  it  over 
again  while  their  noses  got  red  and  their  fingers 
were  benumbed.  These,  fellow- citizens,  are  a  few 
of  the  sacrifices  that  science  has  made  on  our  be- 
half in  order  that  we  may  not  grow  up  in  ignorance. 
These  are  a  few  of  the  blessed  privileges  which, 
along  with  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happi- 


62  BILL  NY&S 

ness,  are  ours — ours  to  anticipate,  ours  to  partici- 
pate, ours  to  precipitate. 


Fl^ANGISGO 


BOEN  IN  SHAME  AND  EEAEED  AMONG  SWINE,  HE  CONQUEES 

FAME  AND  FOETUNE  IN  PEEU  WITH  THE    SWOED  - 

HISTOEY  OF  A  SELF-MADE    MAN. 


BILL    NYE. 


Perhaps  the  history  of  the  western  hemisphere 
has  never  furnished  a  more  wonderful  example  of 
the  self-made  man  than  may  be  found  in  the  person 
of  Francisco  Pizarro,  a  gentleman  who  came  to 
America  about  1510,  intending  to  grow  up  with 
the  country. 


CORD  WOOD.  63 

Mr.  Pizarro  was  born  at  Truxillo,  Spain,  about 
1471.  His  father  was  a  Spanish  colonel  of  foot 
and  his  mother  was  a  peasant  girl  who  admired 
and  respected  the  dashing  colonel  very  much,  but 
felt  that  she  had  scruples  about  marriage,  and  so, 
although  years  afterward  Francisco  tried  his  best 
to  make  a  match  between  his  father  and  mother, 
they  were  never  married.  It  is  said  that  this  em- 
bittered his  whole  life.  None  but  those  who  have 
experienced  it  can  fully  realize  what  it  is  to  have  a 
thankless  parent. 

Pizarro's  mother's  name  was  Estramadura.  This 
was  her  maiden  name.  It  was  a  name  which 
seemed  to  harmonize  well  with  her  rich,  pickled- 
olive  complexion  and  so  she  retained  it  all  her  life. 
Her  son  did  not  have  many  early  advantages,  for 
he  was  neglected  by  his  mother  and  allowed  to 
grow  up  a  swineherd,  and  it  is  even  said  that  he 
was  suckled  by  swine  in  his  infancy  while  his  giddy 
mother  joined  in  the  mad  whirl  at  the  skating-rink. 
We  can  hardly  imagine  anything  more  pitiable  than 
the  condition  of  a  little  child  left  to  rustle  for 
nourishment  among  the  black- and-t an  hogs  of  Spain 
while  his  father  played  old  sledge  on  the  frontier  in 
the  regular  army  and  his  mother  stood  on  her  Span- 
ish head  and  wrote  her  cigar-box  name  in  the 
atmosphere  at  the  rink. 

Poor  little  Pizarro  had  none  of  the  modern  ad- 


64  BILL  NTE^S 

vantages,  therefore,  and  his  education  was  ex- 
tremely crude.  The  historian  says  that  he  grew 
up  a  bold,  ignorant,  and  brutal  man.  He  came  to 
what  was  then  called  Spanish  America  at  the  age 
of  39  years  and  assisted  Mr.  Balboa  in  discovering 
the  Pacific  ocean.  Having  heard  of  the  existence 
of  Peru  with  all  its  wealth,  Pizarro  secured  a  band 
of  self-made  men  like  himself  and  lit  out  for  that 
province  for  the  purpose  of  conquering  it  if  he 
liked  it  and  bringing  home  some  solid  silver  teapots 
and  gold-lined  card-receivers.  He  was  engaged  in 
gathering  this  line  of  goods  and  working  them  off 
on  the  pawnbroker  for  twenty-one  years,  during 
which  time  he  did  not  get  killed,  but  continued  to 
enjoy  a  reasonable  degree  of  health  and  strength. 
Although  Peru  at  that  time  was  quite  densely 
populated  with  an  industrious  and  wealthy  class  of 
natives,  Pizarro  subdued  her  with  110  foot  soldiers 
armed  with  old-fashioned  muskets  that  had  these 
full-blown  barrels,  with  muzzles  on  them  like  the 
business  end  of  a  tuba  horn,  sixty-seven  mounted 
men,  and  two  toy  cannon  loaded  with  carpet-tacks. 
With  no  education,  and,  what  was  still  harder  to 
bear,  the  inner  consciousness  that  his  parents  were 
plain,  common,  every-day  people  whose  position  in 
life  would  not  advance  him  in  the  estimation  of  the 
Peruvians,  he  battled  on.  His  efforts  were  crowned 
with  success,  insomuch  that  at  the  close  of  the 


GORDWOOD.  65 

year  1532  peace  was  declared  and  he  could  breathe 
the  free  air  once  more  without  fear  of  getting  a 
bronze  arrow-head  mixed  up  with  his  kidneys  when 
his  back  was  turned.  "For  the  first  time  in  two 
years,"  says  the  historian,  "Pizarro  was  able  to 
take  off  his  tin  helmet  and  his  sheet-iron  corset  at 
night  when  he  lay  down  to  rest,  or  undismayed  to 
go  forth  bareheaded  and  wearing  only  his  crinkled 
seersucker  coat  and  a  pair  of  sandals  at  the  twi- 
light hour  and  till  midnight  wander  alone  amid  the 
famous  guano  groves  of  Peru." 

Such  is  the  history  of  a  man  who  never  even 
knew  how  to  write  his  own  name.  He  won  fame 
for  himself  and  great  wealth  without  an  education 
or  a  long,  dark-blue  lineage.  Pizarro  was  like  Job. 
You  know,  we  sometimes  sing : 

Oh,  Job,  he  was  a  fine  young  lad, 

Sing  glory  hallelujah. 
His  heart  was  good  but  his  blood  was  bad, 

Sing  glory  hallelujah. 

So  Pizarro  could  not  brag  on  his  blood  and  his 
education  was  not  classical.  He  could  not  write 
his  name,  though  he  tried  faithfully  for  many  years. 
Day  after  day  during  the  campaign,  and  late  into 
the  night,  when  the  yaller  dogs  of  Lima  came  forth 
with  their  Peruvian  bark,  he  would  get  his 
orderly  sergeant  to  set  him  the  copy : 


66  BILL 

"Paul  may  plant  and  Apollinaris  water,  but  it  is 
God  that  giveth  the  increase." 

Then  Pizarro  would  bring  out  his  writing  mate- 
rial and  his  tongue  and  try  to  write,  but  he  never 
could  do  it.  His  was  not  a  studious  mind.  It  was 
more  on  the  knock-down-and-drag-out  order. 

Pizarro  was  made  a  marquis  in  after  years.  He 
was  also  made  a  corpse.  He  acquired  the  latter 
position  toward  the  close  of  his  life.  He,  at  one 
time,  married  the  inca's  daughter  and  founded  a  long 
line  of  grandees,  marquises,  and  macaroni  sculptors, 
whose  names  may  be  found  on  the  covers  of  im- 
ported cigar  boxes  and  in  the  topmost  tier  of  the 
wrought-iron  resorts  in  our  best  penitentiaries. 

Pizarro  lived  a  very  busy  life  during  the  conquest, 
some  days  killing  as  many  as  seventy  and  eighty 
Peruvians  between  sun  and  sun.  But  death  at 
last  crooked  his  finger  at  the  marquis  and  he  slept. 
We  all  brag  and  blow  our  horn  here  for  a  few  brief 
years,  it  is  true,  but  when  the  grim  reaper  with  his 
new  and  automatic  twine-binder  comes  along  he 
gathers  us  in;  the  weak  and  the  strong,  the  igno- 
rant and  the  educated,  the  plain  and  the  beautiful, 
the  young  and  the  old,  those  who  have  just  sniffed 
the  sweet  and  dew-laden  air  of  life's  morning  and 
those  who  are  footsore  and  weary  and  waiting — all 
alike  must  bow  low  to  the  sickle  that  goes  on  cut- 
ting closer  and  closer  to  us  even  when  we  sleep. 


CORD  WOOD  67 

Had  Pizarro  thought  more  about  this  matter,  he 
would  have  been  ahead  to-day. 


BILL  HYB. 

HE  DISCOVEES  A  MAN  WITH   AN    IDEA A    NEW    PLAN    OF 

BUNNING  A  GOOD  HOTEL — IMPEOVEMENTS  FOE 
WHICH  PEOPLE  PAY  IN  ADVANCE. 

The  following  circular  from  a  hotel-man  in  Kan- 
sas is  going  about  over  the  country,  and  it  certain- 
ly deserves  more  than  a  passing  notice.  I  change 
the  name  of  the  hotel  and  proprietor  in  order  to  avoid 
giving  any  free  boom  to  a  man  who  seems  to  be 
thoroughly  self-reliant  and  able  to  take  care  of  him- 


68  BILL 

self.  The  rest  of  the  circular  is  accurately  copied : 
KANSAS. — Dear  Sir:  Not  having  enough  room 
under  our  present  arrangements,  and  wishing  to 
make  the  Roller-Towel  House  the  recognized  head- 
quarters for  traveling  men,  we  desire  to  enlarge 
the  building.  Not  having  the  money  on  hand  to 
do  so,  we  make  the  following  proposition :  If  you 
will  advance  us  $5,  to  be  used  for  the  above  pur- 
pose, we  will  deduct  that  amount  from  your  bill 
when  stopping  with  us.  We  feel  assured  that  the 
traveling  men  appreciate  our  efforts  to  give  them 
first-class  accommodations,  and  as  the  above  amount 
will  be  deducted  from  your  bill  when  stopping  with 
us,  we  hope  for  a  favorable  reply.  Should  you  not 
visit  our  town  again  the  loan  will  be  repaid  in 
cash.  J.  KKASH  TOWEL, 

Proprietor  Roller-Towel  House. 
Here  we  have  a  man  with  a  quiet,  gentlemanly 
way,  and  yet  withal  a  cool,  level  head,  a  man  who 
knows  when  he  needs  more  room  and  how  best  to 
go  to  work  to  remedy  that  defect.  Mr.  Towel  sees 
that  another  row  of  sleeping  rooms,  cut  low  in  the 
ceiling,  is  actually  needed.  In  fancy  he  already 
sees  these  rooms  added  to  his  house.  Each  has  a 
strip  of  hemp  carpet  in  front  of  the  bed  and  a  cute 
little  green  shade  over  the  window,  a  shade  that 
falls  down  when  we  try  to  adjust  it,  filling  the 
room  with  Kansas  dust.  In  his  dreams  he  sees 


CORDWOOD.  69 

each  room  fitted  out  with  one  of  those  smooth,  de- 
ceptive beds  that  are  all  right  until  we  begin  to 
use  them  for  sleeping  purposes,  a  bed  that  the  tall 
man  lies  diagonally  across  and  groans  through  the 
livelong  night. 

Mr.  Towel  has  made  a  rapid  calculation  on  the 
buttered  side  of  a  menu,  and  ascertained  that  if 
one-half  the  traveling  men  in  the  United  States 
would  kindly  advance  $5,  to  be  refunded  in  case 
they  did  not  decide  to  make  a  tour  to  the  Koller 
Towel  House,  and  to  be  taken  out  of  the  bill  in 
case  they  did,  the  amount  so  received  would  not 
only  add  a  row  of  compressed  hot-air  bedrooms, 
with  flexible  soap  and  a  delirious-looking  glass,  but 
also  insure  an  electric  button,  which  may  or  may 
not  connect  with  the  office,  and  over  which  said 
button  the  following  epitaph  could  be  erected : 

One  Eing  for  Bell  Boy. 
Two  Kings  for  Porter. 
Three  Kings  for  Ice  Water. 
Four  Kings  for  Kough  on  Rats. 
Five  Kings  for  Borrowed  Money. 
Six  Kings  for  Fire. 
Seven  Kings  for  Hook  and  Ladder 
Company. 

In  fact,  a  man  could  have  rings  on  his  fingers  and 
bell-boys  on  his  toes  all  the  time  if  he  wanted  to  do 
so. 


TO  BILL 

And  yet  there  will  be  traveling-men  who  will 
receive  this  kind  circular  and  still  hang  back.  Con- 
stant contact  with  a  cold,  cruel  world  has  made 
them  cynical,  and  they  will  hesitate  even  after  Mr. 
Towel  has  said  that  he  will  improve  his  house  with 
the  money,  and  even  after  he  has  assured  us  that 
we  need  not  visit  Kansas  at  all  if  we  will  advance 
the  money.  This  shows  that  he  is  not  altogether 
a  heartless  man.  Mr.  Towel  may  be  poor,  but  he 
is  not  without  consideration  for  the  feelings  of 
people  who  loan  him  money. 

For  my  own  part  I  fully  believe  that  Mr.  Towel 
would  be  willing  to  fit  up  his  house  and  put  match- 
es in  each  room  if  traveling-men  throughout  the 
country  would  respond  to  this  call  for  assistance. 

But  the  trouble  is  that  the  traveling  public  ex- 
pect a  landlord  to  take  all  the  risks  and  advance  all 
the  money.  This  makes  the  matter  of  hotel  keep- 
ing a  hazardous  one.  Mr.  Towel  asks  the  guests 
to  become  an  interested  party.  Not  that  he  in  so 
many  words  agrees  to  divide  the  profits  proportion- 
ately at  the  end  of  the  year  with  the  stockholders, 
but  he  is  willing  to  make  his  hotel  larger,  and  if 
food  does  not  come  up  as  fast  as  it  goes  down — in 
price,  I  mean — he  will  try  to  make  all  his  guests 
feel  perfectly  comfortable  while  in  his  house. 

Under  favorable  circumstances  the  Koller  Towel 
House  would  no  doubt  be  thoroughly  refitted  and 


COED  WOOD.  71 

refurnished  throughout.  The  little  writing-table 
in  each  room  would  have  its  legs  reglued,  new  wicks 
would  be  inserted  in  the  kerosene  lamps,  the  stairs 
would  be  dazzled  over  with  soft  soap,  and  the  teeth 
in  the  comb  down  in  the  wash-room  would  be  reset 
and  filled.  Numerous  changes  would  be  made  in 
the  corps  de  ballet  also.  The  large-handed  cham- 
bermaid, with  the  cow-catcher  teeth  and  the  red 
Brazil-nut  of  hair  on  the  back  of  her  head,  would 
be  sent  cown  in  the  dining-room  to  recite  that  little 
rhetorical  burst  so  often  rendered  by  the  elocution- 
ist of  the  dining-room — the  smart  Aleckutionist,  in 
the  language  of  the  poet,  begining:  "Bfsteakprk- 
stk'ncoldts,"  with  a  falling  inflection  that  sticks  its 
head  into  the  bosom  of  the  earth  and  gives  its  tail 
a  tremolo  movement  in  the  air. 

On  receipt  of  $5  from  each  one  of  the  traveling 
men  of  the  union  new  hinges  would  be  put  into  the 
slippery-elm  towels ;  the  pink  soap  would  be  revar- 
nished ;  the  different  kinds  of  meat  on  the  table  will 
have  tags  on  them,  stating  in  plain  words  what 
kinds  of  meat  they  are  so  that  guests  will  not  be 
forced  to  take  the  word  of  servant  or  to  reply  on 
their  own  judgement ;  fresh  vinegar  with  a  sour  taste 
to  it,  and  without  microbes,  will  be  put  in  the 
cruets ;  the  old  and  useless  cockroaches  will  be  dis- 
charged ;  and  the  latest  and  most  approved  adjuncts 
of  hotel  life  will  be  adopted. 


72  BILL 

Why,  then,  should  the  traveling  man  hesitate? 
Why  should  he  doubt  and  draw  back,  falter  and 
shrink?  Why  should  he  allow  pessimism  and  other 
foreign  substances  to  get  into  his  system  and 
change  his  whole  life? 

Let  him  remit  $5  to  the  Koller  Towel  House,  and 
if  this  should  prove  a  success  he  may  assist  other 
hotels  in  the  same  manner.  He  would  thus  feel 
an  interest  in  their  growth  and  prosperity.  Then, 
as  he  became  more  and  more  forehanded,  he  could 
assist  the  railroads,  the  'bus  lines,  and  the  boot- 
blacks, barbers,  laundries,  &c.,  in  the  same  manner. 
I  would  like  to  call  upon  the  American  people  in  the 
same  way. 

I  would  like  very  much  to  establish  a  nice,  ex- 
pensive home  for  inebriates.  It  would  cost,  pro- 
perly fittted  up,  about  $750,000  or  $800,000.  If 
those  who  read  this  article  will  lend  $50,  by  express 
or  draft,  I  will  take  it  out  of  their  bill  the  first  time 
they  will  stop  at  my  new  and  attractive  inebriate 
asylum.  Who  will  be  the  first  to  contribute? — 
Boston  Globe. 


COED  WOOD.  73 

BILL  HYE-  "INGUBATCES." 

My  Dear  Son  :  We  are  still  pegging  along  here 
at  home  in  the  same  old  way,  your  mother  and  me. 
We  are  neither  of  us  real  well,  and  yet  I  suppose  we 
are  as  well  as  folks  at  our  time  of  life  could  expect 
to  be.  Your  mother  has  a  good  deal  of  pain  in  her 
side  all  the  while  and  I  am  off  my  feed  more  or  less 
in  the  morning.  Doc  has  fixed  me  up  some  condition 
powders  that  he  says  will  straighten  me  out  right 
away.  Perhaps  so.  Doc  has  straightened  out  a 
good  many  people  in  his  time.  I  wish  I  had  as 
many  dollars  as  he  has  straightened  out  people. 

Most  every  Spring  I've  had  to  take  a  little  dan- 
delion root,  limbered  up  with  gin,  but  this  year 
that  didn't  seem  to  get  there,  as  the  boys  say.  I 
fixed  up  a  dost  of  it  and  took  it  day  and  night  for 
a  week  till  I  wore  that  old  dandelion  root  clear 
down  to  skin  and  bone,  but  in  ten  days  my  appetite 
was  worse  than  ever  and  I  had  a  head  on  me  like  a 
2-year-old  colt.  Dandelion  root  never  served  me 
that  way  before  and  your  mother  thinks  that  the 
goodness  is  all  out  of  it,  may  be.  It's  the  same 
old  dandelion  root  that  I've  been  using  for  twenty 
years,  and  I  believe  when  youv'e  tried  a  thing  and 
proved  it's  good,  you  ortent  to  change  off. 

I  tried  to  get  your  mother  to  take  a  dost  of  it 
last  week  for  the  pain  in  her  side.  Fixed  up  a  two- 


74  BILL  NY&S 

quart  jug  of  it  for  her,  but  she  can't  bear  the  smell 
of  gin  so  I  had  to  take  it  myself.  Dandelion  is  a 
great  purifier  of  the  blood,  Henry.  Some  days  af- 
ter I've  been  taking  this  dandelion  root  for  an  hour 
or  two  I  feel  as  if  my  blood  was  pretty  near  pure 
enough.  I  feel  like  a  new  man. 

You  know  I  wrote  you  last  winter,  Henry,  that 
I  was  going  to  buy  some  new-fangled  hens  in  the 
spring  and  go  into  the  egg  business.  Well,  I  sent 
east  in  March  for  a  couple  of  fowls,  one  of  each 
sect.  They  came  at  $9  per  pair  over  and  above 
railroad  charges,  which  was  some  $4.35  more  on 
top  of  that. 

I  thought  that  as  soon  as  the  hen  got  here  and 
got  her  things  off  and  got  rested  she  would  pro- 
ceed to  lay  some  of  these  here  high-priced  eggs 
which  we  read  of  in  the  Poultry-Keepers'  Guide 
and  American  Eggist.  But  she  seemed  pensive, 
and  when  I  tried  to  get  acquainted  with  her  she 
would  cluck  in  a  croupy  tone  of  voice  and  go  away. 

The  rooster  was  no  doubt  a  fine-looking  brute 
when  he  was  shipped,  but  when  he  got  here  he 
strolled  around  with  a  preoccupied  air  and  seemed 
to  feel  above  us.  He  was  a  poker-dot  rooster,  with 
gray  mane  and  tail,  and  he  was  no  doubt  refined, 
but  I  did  not  think  he  should  feel  above  his  busi- 
ness, for  we  are  only  plain  people  who  are  accus- 
tomed to  the  self-made  American  hen.  He  seemed 


CORD  WOOD.  75 

bored  all  the  time,  and  I  could  see  by  the  way  he 
acted  that  he  pined  to  be  back  in  Fremont,  0., 
having  his  picture  taken  for  the  Poultry-Keepers' 
Guide  and  American  Eggist.  He  still  yearned  for 
approbation.  He  was  used  to  being  made  of,  as 
your  mother  says,  and  it  galled  him  to  enter  into 
our  plain,  humdrum  home  life. 

I  never  saw  such  a  haughty  rooster  in  my  life. 
Actually,  when  I  got  out  to  feed  him  in  the  morn- 
ing he  would  give  me  a  cold,  arrogant  look  that 
hurt  my  feelings.  I  know  I'm  not  what  you  would 
call  an  educated  man  nor  a  polished  man,  though 
I  claim  to  have  a  son  that  is  both  of  said  things, 
but  I  hate  to  have  a  rooster  crow  over  me  because 
he  has  had  better  advantages  and  better  breeding 
than  I  have.  So  there  was  no  love  lost  between 
us,  as  you  can  see. 

Directly  I  noticed  that  the  hen  began  to  have 
spells  of  vertigo.  She  would  be  standing  in  a  cor- 
ner of  the  hen  retreat,  reverting  to  her  joyous 
childhood  at  Fremont,  0.,  when  all  at  once  she 
would  "fall  senseless  to  the  earth  and  there  he 
prone  upon  the  sward,"  to  use  the  words  of  a  great 
writer  whose  address  has  been  mislaid.  She  would 
remain  in  this  comytoes  condition  for  between  five 
minutes,  perhaps.  Then  she  would  rally  a  little, 
slowly  pry  open  her  large,  mournful  eyes,  and  seem 
to  murmur  "Where  am  I?" 


76  BILL  NTE^S 

I  could  see  that  she  was  evading  the  egg  issue 
in  every  way  and  ignoring  the  great  object  for 
which  she  was  created.  With  the  ability  to  lay 
eggs  worth  from  $4  to  $5.75  per  dozen  delivered 
on  the  cars,  I  could  plainly  see  that  she  proposed 
to  roll  up  this  great  talent  in  a  napkin  and  play 
the  invalid  act.  I  do  not  disguise  the  fact, 
Henry,  that  I  was  mad.  I  made  a  large  rectangu- 
lar affidavit  in  the  inner  temple  of  the  horse- 
barn  that  this  poker-dot  hen  should  never  live  to 
say  that  I  had  sent  her  to  the  seashore  for  her 
health  when  she  was  eminently  fitted  by  nature  to 
please  the  public  with  her  lay. 

I  therefore  gave  her  two  weeks  to  decide  on 
whether  she  would  contribute  a  few  of  her  meri- 
torious articles  or  insert  herself  into  a  chicken  pie. 

She  still  continued  haughty  to  the  last  moment. 
So  did  her  pardner.  We  therefore  treated  ourselves 
to  a  $9  dinner  in  April. 

I  then  got  some  expensive  eggs  from  the  effete 
east.  They  were  not  robust  eggs.  They  were 
layed  during  a  time  of  great  depression,  I  judge. 
So  they  were  that  way  themselves  also.  They 
came  by  express,  and  were  injured  while  being 
transferred  at  Chicago.  No  one  has  travelled  over 
that  line  of  railroad  since. 

I  do  not  say  that  the  eggs  were  bad,  but  I  say 
that  their  instincts  and  their  inner  life  wasn't 


A      A 


CORDWOOD.  77 

what  they  ort  to  have  been. 

In  early  May  I  bought  one  of  these  inkybaters 
that  does  the  work  of  ten  setting  hens.  I  hoped 
to  head  off  the  hen  so  far  as  possible,  simply  pur- 
chasing her  literary  efforts  and  editing  them  to 
suit  myself.  I  cannot  endure  the  society  of  a  low- 
bred hen,  and  a  refined  hen  seems  to  look  down  on 
me,  and  so  I  thought  if  I  could  get  one  of  those 
ottymatic  inkybaters  I  could  have  the  whole  pro- 
cess under  my  own  control,  and  if  the  blooded  hens 
wanted  to  go  to  the  sanitarium  and  sit  around  there 
with  their  hands  in  their  pockets  while  the  great 
hungry  world  of  traffic  clamored  for  more  spring 
chickens  fried  in  butter  they  might  do  so  and  be 
doggoned. 

Thereupon  I  bought  one  of  the  medium  size,  two 
story  hatchers  and  loaded  it  with  eggs.  In  my 
dreams  I  could  see  a  long  procession  of  fuzzy  little 
chickens  marching  out  of  my  little  inkybater  arm 
in  arm,  every  day  or  two,  while  my  bank  account 
swelled  up  like  a  deceased  horse. 

I  was  dreaming  one  of  these  dreams  night  before 
last  at  midnight's  holy  hour  when  I  was  rudely  a- 
wakened  by  a  gallon  of  cold  water  in  one  of  my 
ears.  I  arose  in  the  darkness  and  received  a  squirt 
of  cold  water  through  the  window  from  our  ever- 
watchful  and  courageous  fire  department.  I 
opened  the  casement  for  the  purpose  of  thanking 


78  BILL 

them  for  this  little  demonstration,  wholly  unsolic- 
ited on  my  part,  when  I  discovered  the  hennery 
was  in  flames. 

I  went  down  to  assist  the  department,  forgetting 
to  put  on  my  pantaloons  as  is  my  custom  out  of 
deference  to  the  usages  of  good  society.  We 
saved  the  other  buildings,  but  the  hatchery  is  a 
mass  of  smoldering  ruins.  So  am  I. 

It  seems  that  the  kerosene  lamp  which  I  kept 
burning  in  the  inkybater  for  the  purpose  of  main- 
taining an  even  temperature,  and  also  for  the  pur- 
pose of  showing  the  chickens  the  way  to  the  eleva- 
tor in  case  they  should  hatch  out  in  the  night,  liad 
torched  up  and  ignited  the  hatchery,  so  to  speak. 

I  see  by  my  paper  that  we  are  importing  200,000,- 

000  of  hens'  eggs  from  Europe  every  year.     It'll  be 
300,000,000  next  year  so  far  as  I'm  concerned, 
Henry,  and  you  can  bet  your  little  pleated  jacket 
on  it,  too,  if  you  want  to. 

To-day  I  send  P.  0.  order  No.  143,876  for  $3.50. 

1  agree  with  the  bible  that  "the  fool  and  his  money 
are  soon  parted."    Your  father, 

Bill  Nye. 


BILL  HYE  ON  ©OBAGGO. — p  DISCOURAGED  OP 

CANNIBALISM. 

I  am  glad  to  notice  a  strong  effort  on  the  part  of 
the  friends    of  humanity  to  encourage  those  who 


COED  WOOD.  79 

wish  to  quit  the  use  of  tobacco.  To  quit  the  use 
of  this  weed  is  one  of  the  most  agreeable  methods 
of  relaxation.  I  have  tried  it  a  great  many  times, 
and  I  can  safely  say  that  it  has  afforded  me  much 
solid  felicity. 

To  violently  reform  and  cast  away  the  weed  and 
at  the  end  of  a  week  to  find  a  good  cigar  unexpect- 
edly in  the  quiet,  unostentatious  pocket  of  an  old 
vest,  affords  the  most  intense  and  delirious  delight. 

Scientists  tell  us  that  a  siugle  drop  of  the  con- 
centrated oil  of  tobacco  on  the  tongue  of  an  adult 
dog  is  fatal.  I  have  no  doubt  about  the  truth  or 
cohesive  power  of  this  statement,  and  for  that 
reason  I  have  always  been  opposed  to  the  use  of 
tobacco  among  dogs.  Dogs  should  shun  the  con- 
centrated oil  of  tobacco,  especially  if  longevity  be 
any  object  to  them.  Neither  would  I  advise  a  man 
who  may  have  canine  tendencies  or  a  strain  of  that 
blood  in  his  veins  to  use  the  concentrated  oil  of 
tobacco  as  a  sozodont.  To  those  who  may  feel 
that  way  about  tobacco  I  would  say,  shun  it  by  all 
means.  Shun  it  as  you  would  the  deadly  upas  tree 
or  the  still  more  deadly  whipple  tree  of  the  topics. 

In  what  I  may  say  under  this  head  please  bear 
in  mind  that  I  do  not  speak  of  the  cigarette.  I  am 
now  confining  my  remarks  entirely  to  the  subject 
of  tobacco. 

The  use  of  the  cigarette  is,  in  fact,  beneficial  in 


80  BILL  NY&S 

in  some  ways,  and  no  pest  house  should  try  to  get 
along  without  it.  It  is  said  that  they  are  very 
popular  in  the  orient,  especially  in  the  lazar  houses, 
where  life  would  otherwise  become  very  monoto- 
nous. 

Scientists,  who  have  been  unable  to  successfully 
use  tobacco  and  who  therefore  have  given  their 
whole  lives  and  the  use  of  their  microscopes  to  the 
investigation  of  its  horrors,  say  that  cannibals  will 
not  eat  the  flesh  of  tobacco-using  human  beings. 
And  yet  we  say  to  our  missionaries  :  "  No  man  can 
be  a  Christian  and  use  tobacco." 

I  say,  and  I  say  it,  too,  with  all  that  depth  of 
feeling  which  has  always  characterized  my  ear- 
nest nature,  that  in  this  we  are  committing  a  great 
error. 

What  have  the  cannibals  ever  done  for  us  as  a 
people  that  we  should  avoid  the  use  of  tobacco  in 
order  to  fit  our  flesh  for  their  tables.  In  what  way 
have  they  sought  to  ameliorate  our  condition  in 
life  that  we  should  strive  in  death  to  tickle  their 
palates. 

Look  at  the  history  of  the  cannibal  for  past  ages. 
Read  carefully  his  record  and  you  will  see  that  it 
has  been  but  the  history  of  a  selfish  race.  Cast  your 
eye  back  over  your  shoulder  for  a  century,  and 
what  do  you  find  to  be  the  condition  of  the  canni- 
balists?  Anew  missionary  has  landed  a  few  weeks 


CORD  WOOD.  81 

previous  perhaps.  A  little  group  is  gathered  about 
on  the  beach  beneath  a  tropical  tree.  Representa- 
tive cannibals  from  adjoining  islands  are  present. 
The  odor  of  sanctity  pervades  the  air. 

The  chief  sits  beneath  a  new  umbrella,  looking 
at  the  pictures  in  a  large  concordance.  A  new 
plug  hat  is  hanging  in  a  tree  near  by. 

Anon  the  leading  citizens  gather  about  on  the 
ground,  and  we  hear  the  chief  ask  his  attorney- 
general  whether  he  will  take  some  of  the  light  or 
some  of  the  dark  meat. 

That  is  all. 

Far  away  in  England  the  paper  contains  the 
following  personal: 

WANTED. — A  YOUNG  MAN  TO  GO  AS  MISSIONAEY  TO 
supply  vacancy  in  one  of  the  cannibal  islands.  He 
must  fully  understand  the  appetites  and  tastes  of 
the  cannibals,  must  be  able  to  reach  their  in- 
ner nature  at  once,  and  must  not  use  tobacco. 
Applicants  may  communicate  in  person  or  by 
letter. 

Is  it  strange  that  under  these  circumstances 
those  who  frequented  the  cannibal  islands  during 
the  last  century  should  have  quietly  accustomed 
themselves  to  the  use  of  a  peculiarly  pernicious, 
violent,  and  all-pervading  brand  of  tobacco?  I 
think  not. 


82  BILL  NY&S 

To  me  the  statement  that  tobacco-tainted  human 
flesh  is  offensive  to  the  cannibal  does  not  come 
home  with  crushing  power. 

Perhaps  I  do  not  love  my  fellow-man  so  well  as 
the  cannibal  does.  I  know  that  I  am  selfish  in 
this  way,  and  if  my  cannibal  brother  desires  to 
polish  my  wishbone  he  must  take  me  as  he  finds 
me.  I  cannot  abstain  wholly  from  the  use  of  to- 
bacco in  order  to  gratify  the  pampered  tastes  of 
one  who  has  never  gone  out  of  his  way  to  do  me  a 
favor. 

Do  I  ask  the  cannibal  to  break  off  the  pernicious 
use  of  tobacco  because  I  dislike  the  flavor  of  it  in 
his  brisket?  I  will  defy  any  respectable  resident 
of  the  cannibal  islands  to-day  to  place  his  finger  on 
a  solitary  instance  where  I  have  ever,  by  word  or 
deed,  intimated  that  he  should  make  the  slightest 
change  in  his  habits  on  my  account,  unless  it  be  that 
I  may  have  suggested  that  a  diet  consisting  of  more 
anarchists  and  less  human  beings  would  be  more 
productive  of  general  and  lasting  good. 

My  own  idea  would  be  to  send  a  class  of  men  to 
these  islands  so  thoroughly  imbued  with  their  great 
object  and  the  oil  of  tobacco  that  the  great  Cauca- 
sian chowder  of  those  regions  would  be  followed 
by  such  weeping  and  wailing  and  gnashing  of  teeth 
and  such  remorse  and  repentance  and  gastric  up- 
heavals that  it  would  be  as  unsafe  to  eat  a  mission- 


CORD  WOOD.  83 

ary  in  the  cannibal  islands  as  it  is  to  eat  ice-cream 
in  the  United  States  to-day. 


BILL  RYE'S 

The  excitement  consequent  upon  the  anticipated 
departure  of  Mr.  Gilder  for  the  north  pole  has 
recently  awakened  in  the  bosom  of  the  American 
people  a  new  interest  in  what  I  may  term  that 
great  terra  incognita,  if  I  may  be  pardoned  for 
using  a  phrase  from  my  own  mother  tongue. 

Let  us  for  a  moment  look  back  across  the  bleak 
waste  of  years  and  see  what  wonderful  progress  has 
been  made  in  the  discovery  of  the  pole.  We  may 
then  ask  ourselves,  who  will  be  first  to  tack  his  loca- 
tion notice  on  the  gnawed  and  season-cracked  sur- 
face of  the  pole  itself,  and  what  will  he  do  with  it 
after  he  has  so  filed  upon  it? 

Iceland,  I  persume,  was  discovered  about  860 
A.  D.,  or  1,026  years  ago,  but  the  stampede  to  Ice- 
land has  always  been  under  control,  and  you  can 
get  corner  lots  in  the  most  desirable  cities  of  Ice- 
land, and  wear  a  long  rickety  name  with  links  in  it 
like  a  rosewood  sausage,  to-day  at  a  low  price. 
Naddodr,  a  Norwegian  viking,  discovered  Iceland 
A.  D.  860,  but  he  did  not  live  to  meet  Lieutenant 
Greely  or  any  of  our  most  celebrated  northern 
tourists.  Why  Noddodr  yearned  to  go  north  and 


84  BILL 

discover  a  colder  country  than  his  own,  why  he  should 
seek  to  wet  his  feet  and  get  icicles  down  his  back 
in  order  to  bring  to  light  more  snow-banks  and 
chilblains,  I  cannot  at  this  time  understand.  Why 
should  a  robust  and  prosperous  viking  roam  around 
in  the  cold  trying  to  nose  out  more  frost-bitten  Es- 
quimaux, when  he  could  remain  at  home  and  vike? 

But  I  leave  this  to  the  thinking  mind.  Let  the 
thinking  mind  grapple  with  it.  It  has  no  charms 
for  me.  Moreover,  I  haven't  that  kind  of  a  mind. 
Octher,  another  Norwegian  gentleman,  sailed 
around  North  cape  and  crossed  the  arctic  circle  in  890 
A.  D.,  but  he  crossed  it  in  the  night,  and  didn't  no- 
tice it  at  the  time. 

Two  or  three  years  later,  Erik  the  Bed  took  a 
large  snow-shovel  and  discovered  the  east  coast  of 
Greenland.  Erik  the  Eed  was  a  Northman,  and  he 
flourished  about  the  ninth  century,  and  before  the 
war.  He  sailed  around  in  that  country  for  several 
years,  drinking  bay  rum  and  bear's  oil  and  having 
a  good  time.  He  wore  fur  underclothes  all  the 
time,  winter  and  summer,  and  evaded  the  poll-tax 
for  a  long  time.  Erik  also  established  a  settle- 
ment on  the  south-east  coast  of  Greenland  in  about 
latitude  60  degrees  north.  These  people  remained 
here  for  some  time,  subsisting  on  shrimp  salad,  sea- 
moss  farina,  and  neat's-foot  oil.  But  finally  they 
became  so  bored  with  the  quiet  country  life  and  the 


COED  WOOD.  85 

backward  springs  that  they  removed  from  there  to 
a  land  that  is  fairer  than  day,  to  use  the  words  of 
another.  They  removed  during  the  holidays,  leav- 
ing their  axle  grease  and  all  they  held  dear,  includ- 
ing their  remains. 

From  that  on  down  to  1380  we  hear  or  read 
varying  and  disconnected  accounts  of  people  who 
have  been  up  that  way,  acquired  a  large  red  chil- 
blain, made  an  observation,  and  died.  Kepresen- 
tatives  from  almost  every  quarter  of  the  globe 
have  been  to  the  far  north,  eaten  their  little  hunch 
of  jerked  polar-bear,  and  then  the  polar-bear  has 
eaten  his  little  hunch  of  jerked  explorer,  and  so 
the  good  work  went  on. 

The  polar  bear,  with  his  wonderful  retentive  facul- 
ties, has  succeeded  in  retaining  his  great  secret  re- 
garding the  pole,  together  with  the  man  who  came 
out  there  to  find  out  about  it.  So  up  to  1380  a 
large  number  of  nameless  explorers  went  to  this 
celebrated  watering-place,  shot  a  few  pemmican, 
ate  a  jerked  whale,  shuddered  a  couple  of  times, 
and  died.  It  has  been  the  history  of  arctic  explor- 
ation from  the  earliest  ages.  Men  have  taken  their 
lives  and  a  few  doughnuts  in  their  hands,  wandered 
away  into  the  uncertain  light  of  the  frozen  north, 
made  a  few  observations — to  each  other  regarding 
the  backward  spring — and  then  cached  their  skel- 
etons forever. 


% 


86  BILL 

In  1380  two  Italians  named  Lem  took  a  load  of 
sun-kissed  bananas  and  made  a  voyage  to  the  ex- 
treme north,  hut  the  historian  says  that  the  ac- 
counts are  so  conflicting,  and  as  the  stories  told 
by  the  two  brothers  did  not  agree  and  neither  ever 
told  it  the  same  on  two  separate  occasions,  the 
history  of  their  voyage  is  not  used  very  much. 

Years  rolled  on,  boys  continued  to  go  to  school 
and  see  in  their  geographies  enticing  pictures  of 
men  in  expensive  fur  clothing  running  sharp  iron 
spears  and  long  dangerous  stab  knives  into 
ferocious  white  bears  and  snorting  around  on 
large  cakes  of  cold  ice  and  having  a  good  time. 
These  inspired  the  growing  youth  to  rise  up  and 
do  likewise.  So  every  nation  'neath  the  sun  has 
contributed  its  assortments  of  choice,  white  skele- 
tons and  second  hand  clothes  to  the  remorseless 
maw  of  the  hungry  and  ravenous  north. 

And  still  the  great  pole  continued  to  squeak  on 
through  days  that  were  six  months  long  and  nights 
that  made  breakfast  seem  almost  useless. 

In  1477  Columbus  went  up  that  way,  but  did 
not  succeed  in  starving  to  death.  He  got  a  bird's- 
eye  view  of  a  large  deposit  of  dark-blue  ice,  got 
hungry  and  came  home. 

During  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  the 
northern  nations  of  Europe,  and  especially  the 
Dutch,  kept  tiff  discovery  business  red-hot,  but 


CORD  WOOD.  87 

they  did  not  get  any  fragments  of  the  true  pole. 
The  maritime  nations  of  Europe,  together  with 
other  foreign  powers,  dynasties,  and  human  beings, 
for  some  time  had  spells  of  visiting  the  polar  seas 
and  neglecting  to  come  back.  It  was  the  custom 
then  as  it  is  now,  to  go  twenty  rods  farther  than  any 
other  man  had  ever  been,  eat  a  deviled  bootleg,  curl 
up,  and  perish.  Thousands  of  the  best  and  bright- 
est minds  of  all  ages  have  yielded  to  this  wild  desire 
to  live  on  sperm  oil,  pain-killer  and  jerked  walrus, 
keep  a  little  blue  diary  for  thirteen  weeks,  and  then 
feed  it  to  a  tall  white  bear  with  red  gums. 

That  is  not  all.  Millions  of  gallons  of  whiskey  are 
sent  to  these  frozen  countries  and  used  by  the  ex- 
plorer in  treating  the  untutored  Esquimaux,  who 
are  not,  and  never  will  be,  voters.  It  seems  to  me 
utterly  ill-advised  and  shamefully  idiotic. 


BILL  HYE'S     NSWEIS  mo 


Capitalist  —  Will  you  kindly  furnish  your  address 
once  more?  You  must  either  stop  moving  about 
so  or  leave  some  one  at  home  to  represent  you. 
Nothing  is  more  humiliating  to  a  literary  man  of 
keen  sensibilities  than  to  draw  at  sight  and  have 
the  draft  returned  with  the  memorandum  on  the 
back  in  pencil  "Gone  to  the  White  mountains,"  or 
"Gone  to  Lake  Elmo/on  another  bridal  tour,"  or 


JL 


88  BILL  NYKS 

"Gone  to  Bayfield  to  be  absent  several  years,"  or 
"Gone  to  Minnetonka  to  wait  till  the  clouds  roll 

by." 

"Searcher,"  Peru,  111. — Cum  grano  salis  was  the 
motto  of  the  ancients,  and  was  written  in  blue  let- 
ters at  the  base  of  the  shield  on  a  field  emerald, 
supported  by  a  cucumber  recumbent.  The  author 
is  unknown. 

"S.  Q.  G.,"  McGree's  Prairie,  Iowa,  asks:  "Do 
you  know  of  any  place  where  a  young  man  can  get 
a  good  living?" 

That  depends  on  what  you  call  a  good  living,  S. 
Q.  G.  If  your  stomach  would  not  revolt  at  plain 
fare,  such  as  poor  people  use,  come  up  and  stop  at 
our  house  awhile.  We  don't  live  high,  but  we  aim 
to  eke  out  an  existence,  as  it  were.  Come  and 
abide  with  us,  S.  Q.  G.  Here  is  where  the  prince 
of  Wales  comes  when  he  gets  weary  of  being  heir 
apparently  to  the  throne.  Here  is  where  Bert 
comes  when  he  has  stood  a  long  time,  first  on  one 
leg  and  then  on  the  other,  waiting  for  his  mother 
to  evacuate  said  throne.  He  bids  dull  care  begone, 
and  clothing  himself  in  some  of  my  own  gaudy 
finery  he  threads  a  small  Limerick  hook  through 
the  vitals  of  a  long-waisted  worm,  as  we  hie  us  to 
the  bosky  dell  where  the  plash  of  the  pleasant- 
voiced  brook  replies  to  the  turtle  dove's  moan. 
There,  where  the  pale  green  plush  of  the  moss  on 


COED  WOOD.  89 

the  big  flat  rocks  deadens  the  footfall  of  Wales  and 
me,  where  the  tip  of  the  long  willow  bough  mon- 
keys with  the  stream  forever,  where  neither  powers 
nor  principalities,  nor  things  present  or  things  to 
come,  can  embitter  us,  we  sit  there,  young  Eegina 
and  me,  and  we  live  more  happy  years  in  twenty 
minutes  than  a  man  generally  lives  all  his  whole 
life  socked  up  against  a  hard  throne  with  the  eagle 
eye  of  a  warning  constituency  on  him. 

It's  a  good  place  to  come,  S.  Q.  G.  Quiet  but  rest- 
ful; full  of  balm  for  the  wounded  spirit  and  close  up 
to  nature's  great  North  American  heart.  That's 
the  idea.  Perhaps  I  do  not  size  you  up  accurately, 
S.  Q.  G-.  You  maybe  a  man  who  does  not  pant  for 
the  sylvan  shade.  Very  likely  you  are  a  seaside 
resortist  and  do  not  care  for  pants,  but  I  simply  say 
to  you  that  if  you  are  a  worthy  young  man  weary  with 
life's  great  battles — beaten  back,  perhaps,  and 
wounded — with  your  neck  knocked  crooked  like  a 
torn-tit  that  has  run  against  a  telegraph  wire  in  the 
night,  come  up  here  into  northern  Wisconsin, 
where  the  butternut  gleams  in  the  autnmn  sunshine 
and  the  ax-helve  has  her  home.  Come  where  the 
sky  is  a  dark  and  glorious  blue  and  the  town  a 
magnificent  red.  Come  where  the  coral  cranberry 
nestles  in  the  green  heart  of  the  yielding  marsh 
and  the  sand-hill  crane  stands  idly  on  the  sedgy 
brim  of  the  lonely  lake  through  all  the  long,  idle 


90  BILL 

day  with  his  hands  in  the  tail  pockets  of  his  tan- 
colored  coat,  trying  to  remember  what  he  did  with 
his  handkerchief. 

Come  up  here,  S.  Q.  G.  and  be  my  amanuensis. 
I  want  a  man  to  go  with  me  on  a  little  private  ex- 
cursion from  the  Dallas  of  the  St.  Croix  to  the 
Sault  Ste.  Marie.  I  want  him  to  go  with  me  and 
act  as  my  private  secretary  and  carry  my  canoe  for 
me.  The  salary  would  be  small  the  first  year,  but 
you  would  have  a  good  deal  of  fun.  Most  any  one 
can  have  fun  with  me.  We  would  go  mostly  for 
relaxation  and  to  build  up  our  systems.  My  system 
is  pretty  well  built  up,  but  it  would  be  a  pleasure 
to  me  to  watch  you  build  yours  up.  What  I  need 
is  a  private  secretary  to  go  with  me  and  take  down 
little  thinklets  that  I  may  have  thought.  You 
would  have  nothing  to  carry  but  the  canoe,  a  small 
tent,  my  gun  and  a  type-writer.  I  would  carry  the 
field  glass.  I  always  carry  the  field  glass  because 
something  might  happen  to  it.  One  time  an  aman- 
uensis who  went  with  me  insisted  on  carrying 
the  field  glass,  and  the  second  day  he  lost  the  cork  out 
of  it,  so  we  had  to  come  back  and  make  a  new  ob- 
servation before  we  could  start. 

You  would  be  welcome,  S.  Q.  G. ;  welcome  here 
in  the  fastness  of  the  forest ;  welcome  where  the 
resinous  air  of  the  spruce  and  the  tamarack  would 
kiss  your  wan  cheek ;  welcome  to  the  rocky  shores 


C) 


CORDWOOD.  91 


of  the  grand  old  fresh  water  monarch,  the  cham- 
pion heavyweight  of  all  the  great  lakes ;  welcome 
to  the  hazy,  lazy  days  of  our  long  voluptuous  au- 
tumn, the  twilight  of  the  closing  year;  welcome  to 
the  shade  of  the  elms,  where  the  sunshine  sneaks 
in  on  tiptoe  and  frolics  with  the  dew  and  the  daisies ; 
welcome  to  the  sombre  depths  of  the  ever  regret- 
ful and  repentant  pines,  whose  venerable  heads  are 
first  to  greet  the  day,  and  whose  heaving  bosoms 
hold  the  night. 

Come  over,  S.  Q.  G.  Be  my  stenographer  and 
I  will  show  you  where  a  friend  of  mine  has  con- 
cealed a  watermelon  patch  in  the  very  heart  of  his 
corn-field.  Come  over  and  we  will  show  him  how 
concealment,  like  a  worm,  may  feed  upon  his  dam- 
aged fruit.  Till  then,  S.  Q.  G.,  ta-ta. 


BILL  HYE  H?^EPA^ING  A  BOLICTIGAL  SPEEGH 

IN   flDYANGE    FOr?  A  ©IME   OP    I^EED. 

Sept.  1. — I  have  just  been  preparing  a  speech  for 
to-morrow  evening  at  our  convention.  It  is  a  good 
speech  and  will  take  well.  It  is  also  sincere. 

I  will  give  the  outlines  of  the  speech  here,  so  that 
in  case  I  should  die  or  slip  up  on  a  stenographer 
the  basis  of  my  remarks  may  not  perish : 

Fellow-Citizens :  You  have  seen  fit  to  renomin- 
ate  me  for  the  office  which  I  have  held  one  term 


92  BILL 

already — viz. :  member  of  congress  from  this 
district. 

As  you  are  aware,  I  am  a  self-made  man.  I 
have  carved  out  my  own  career  from  the  ground 
up,  as  I  may  say,  till  to-day  I  am  your  nominee 
for  the  second  time. 

What  we  want  these  days  is  not  so  much  men 
of  marked  ability  as  candidates  but  available,  care- 
ful and  judicious  men.  We  are  too  apt  to  strive 
for  the  nomination  of  brilliant  men  of  pronounced 
opinions  when  we  must  need  men  who  can  be  eas- 
ily elected.  Of  what  avail  is  a  man  of  genius  and 
education  and  robust  brains  and  earnest  convictions 
if  we  cannot  elect  him?  He  is  simply  a  sounding 
brass  and  a  tinkling  cymbal. 

Therefore,  I  would  say  to  the  youth  of  Ameri- 
ca—could they  stand  before  me  to-day — do  not  strive 
too  hard  or  strain  yourselves  by  endeavoring  to  at- 
tain some  object  after  you  are  elected  to  office.  Let 
your  earnest  convictions  remain  dormant.  Should 
a  man  have  convictions  these  days,  let  him  reserve 
them  for  use  in  his  own  family.  They  are  not 
necessary  in  politics.  If  a  member  of  congress 
must  have  a  conviction  and  earnestly  feels  as  though 
he  could  not  possibly  get  along  another  day  with- 
out it,  let  him  go  to  the  grand  jury  and  make  a 
clean  breast  of  it. 

I  may  say,  fellow-citizens,  without  egotism,  that 


COED  WOOD.  93 

I  have  been  judicious  both  in  the  heat  of  the  cam- 
paign and  in  the  halls  of  legislation.  I  have 
done  nothing  that  could  disrupt  the  party  or  weaken 
our  vote  in  this  district.  It  is  better  to  do  nothing 
than  to  do  things  that  will  be  injurious  to  the  in- 
terests of  the  majority. 

What  do  you  care,  gentlemen,  for  what  I  said  or 
did  in  our  great  session  of  last  winter  so  long  as  I 
came  home  to  you  with  a  solidified  vote  for  this  fall ; 
so  long  as  I  have  not  trodden  on  the  toes  of  the 
Irish,  the  German,  the  Scandinavian,  the  prohibi- 
tionist, the  female-suffragist,  the  anti-mormon,  or 
the  international-copyright  crank? 

Let  us  be  frank  with  each  other,  fellow-citizens. 
Do  you  ask  me  on  my  return  to  you  how  many 
speeches  my  private  secretary  and  the  public  printer 
attached  my  name  to,  or  how  many  packages  of 
fly-blown  turnip  seed  I  sent  to  you  during  the  last 
two  years? 

No  !!! 

You  ask  yourself  how  is  the  vote  of  our  party 
this  fall  as  compared  with  two  years  ago?  And  I 
answer  that  not  a  vote  has  been  mislaid  or  a  ballot 
erased. 

I  have  done  nothing  and  said  nothing  that  a 
carping  constituency  could  get  hold  of.  Though 
I  was  never  in  congress  before,  old  members  envied 


94  BILL  NYE'S 

me   the  long,   blank,  evasive,  and  irreproachable 
record  I  have  made. 

No  man  can  say  that,  even  under  the  stimulat- 
ing influence  of  the  wine  cup,  I  have  given  utter- 
ance in  the  last  two  years  to  anything  that  could 
be  distorted  into  an  opinion.  And  so  to-day  I  come 
back  to  you  and  find  my  party  harmonious,  while 
others  return  to  their  homes  to  be  greeted  by  a 
disrupted  constituency,  over  whose  ruins  the  ever- 
alert  adversary  clambers  to  success. 

So  I  say  to  you  to-night,  Mr.  President  and  gen- 
tlemen of  the  convention,  let  us  leave  to  the  news- 
papers the  expression  of  what  we  call  earnest  con- 
victions— convictions  that  arise  up  in  after  years  to 
belt  us  across  the  face  and  eyes.  Let  injudicious 
young  men  talk  about  that  kind  of  groceries,  but 
the  wary  self-made  politician  who  succeeds  does 
not  do  that  way. 

It  seems  odd  to  me  that  young  men  will  go  on 
year  after  year  trying  to  attain  distinction  by  giv- 
ing utterance  to  opinions  when  they  can  see  for 
themselves  that  we  do  not  want  such  men  for  any 
place  whatever,  from  juryman  to  congressman. 

If  you  examine  my  record  for  the  last  session, 
for  instance,  you  will  not  find  that  I  spent  the  day 
pounding  my  desk  with  an  autograph  album  and 
filling  the  air  with  violent  utterances  pro  or  con 
and  then  sat  up  nights  to  get  myself  interviewed 


CORD  WOOD.  95 

by  the  disturbing  elements  of  the  press.     No,  sir! 

I  am  not  a  disturber,  a  radical  or  a  disrupter ! 

At  Washington  I  am  a  healer  and  at  home  in 
my  ward  I  am  also  a  heeler ! 

What  America  wants  to-day  is  not  so  much  a 
larger  number  of  high-browed  men  who  will  get  up 
on  their  hind  feet  and  call  on  heaven  to  paralyze 
their  right  arms  before  they  will  do  a  wrong  act, 
or  ask  to  have  their  tongues  nailed  to  the  ridge-pole 
of  their  mouths  rather  than  utter  a  false  or  dan- 
gerous doctrine.  That  was  customary  when  the 
country  was  new  and  infested  with  bears;  when 
men  carried  their  guns  to  church  with  them  and 
drank  bay  rum  as  a  beverage. 

These  remarks  made  good  pieces  for  boys  to 
speak,  but  they  will  not  do  now.  What  this  coun- 
try needs  is  a  congress  about  as  equally  balanced 
as  possible  politically,  so  that  when  one  side  walks 
up  and  smells  of  an  appropriation  the  other  can 
growl  in  a  low  tone  of  voice,  from  December  till 
dog-days.  In  this  way  by  a  pleasing  system  of 
postponements,  previous  questions,  points  of  order, 
reference  to  committees,  laying  on  the  table,  and 
general  oblivion,  a  great  deal  may  be  evaded,  and 
people  at  home  who  do  not  closely  read  and  remem- 
ber the  Congressional  Record  will  not  know  who 
was  to  blame. 

Judicious  inertness  and  a  gentle  air  of   evasion 


96  BILL  NTKS 

will  do  much  to  prevent  party  dissension.  I  have 
done  that  way,  and  I  look  for  the  same  old  majority 
that  we  had  at  the  former  election. 

I  often  wonder  if  Daniel  Webster  would  have  the 
nerve  to  get  up  and  talk  as  freely  ahout  things  now 
as  he  used  to  when  politics  had  not  reached  the 
present  state  of  perfection.  We  often  hear  people 
ask  why  we  haven't  got  any  Websters  in  congress 
now.  I  can  tell  you.  They  are  sat  down  on  long 
before  they  get  that  far  along.  They  are  not  en- 
couraged to  say  radical  things  and  split  up  the 
vote. 

I  will  now  close,  thanking  you  for  your  kind  pre- 
ferment. I  will  ever  strive,  while  representing 
you  in  congress,  to  retain  my  following,  and  never, 
by  word  or  deed,  endeavor  to  win  fame  and  applause 
there  at  the  expense  of  votes  at  home.  I  care  not 
to  be  embalmed  in  the  school  speakers  and  declaim- 
ers  of  future  ages,  provided  my  tombstone  shall 
bear  upon  it  the  simple,  poetic  refrain : 
He  got  there. 


BILL  HYB  ON  I^AILF?OADS. 

Perhaps  there  is  nothing  in  the  line  of  discovery 
and  improvement  that  has  shown  more  marked  pro- 
gress in  the  last  century  than  the  railway  and  its 
different  auxiliaries.  When  we  remember  that 


o 


CORD  WOOD.  ft 

much  less  than  a  century  has  passed  since  the  first 
patent  for  a  locomotive  to  move  upon  a  track  was 
issued,  where  now  we  have  everything  that  heart 
can  wish,  and,  in  fact,  live  better  on  the  road  than 
we  do  at  home,  with  but  thirty-six  hours  between 
New  York  and  Minneapolis,  and  a  gorgeous  parlor, 
bedroom,  and  dining-room  between  Maine  and  Ore- 
gon, with  nothing  missing  that  may  go  to  make 
life  a  rich  blessing,  we  are  compelled  to  express  our 
wonder  and  admiration. 

To  Peter  Cooper  is  largely  due  the  boom  given 
to  railway  business,  he  having  constructed  the  first 
locomotive  ever  made  in  this  country,  and  put  it 
on  the  Baltimore  &  Ohio  railroad. 

The  first  train  ever  operated  must  have  been  a 
grand  sight.  First  came  the  locomotive,  a  large 
Babcock  fire-extinguisher  on  trucks,  with  a  smoke- 
stack like  a  full-blown  speaking-tube  with  a  frill 
around  the  top ;  the  engineer  at  his  post  in  a  plug 
hat,  with  an  umbrella  over  his  head  and  his  hand 
on  the  throttle,  borrowing  a  chew  of  tobacco  now 
and  then  of  the  farmers  who  passed  him  on  their 
way  to  town.  Near  him  stood  the  fireman,  now 
and  then  bringing  in  an  armful  of  wood  from  the 
fields  through  which  he  passed,  and  turning  the 
damper  in  the  smoke-stack  every  little  while  so 
it  would  draw.  Now  and  then  he  would  go  for- 
ward and  put  a  pork-rind  on  a  hot  box  or  pound  on 


9£  BILL  NYE'S 

the  cylinder  head  to  warn  people  off  the  track. 

Next  conies  the  tender  loaded  with  nice,  white 
birch  wood,  an  economical  style  of  fuel  because  its 
bark  may  be  easily  burned  off  while  the  wood  itself 
will  remain  uninjured.  Besides  the  firewood  we 
find  on  the  tender  a  barrel  of  rainwater  and  a  tall, 
blonde  jar  with  wicker-work  around  it,  which 
contains  a  small  sprig  of  tansy  immersed  in  four 
gallons  of  New  England  rum.  This  the  engineer 
has  brought  with  him  for  use  in  case  of  accident. 
He  is  now  engaged  in  preparing  for  the  accident 
in  advance. 

Next  comes  the  front  brakeman  in  a  plug  hat 
about  two  sizes  too  large  for  him.  He  also  wears 
a  long-waisted  frock  coat  with  a  bustle  to  it  and  a 
tall  shirt-collar  with  a  table-spread  tie,  the  ends  of 
which  flutter  gayly  in  the  morning  breeze.  As  the 
train  pauses  at  the  first  station  he  takes  a  hammer 
out  of  the  tool-box  and  nails  on  the  tire  of  the  fore 
wheel  of  his  coach.  The  engineer  gets  down  with 
a  long  oil-can  and  puts  a  little  sewing-machine  oil 
on  the  pitman.  He  then  wipes  it  off  with  his 
sleeve. 

It  is  now  discovered  that  the  rear  coach,  con- 
taining a  number  of  directors  and  the  division 
superintendent,  is  missing.  The  conductor  goes 
to  the  rear  of  the  last  coach,  and  finds  that  the 
string  by  which  the  directors'  car  was  attached  is 


COED  WOOD.  99 

broken,  and  that,  the  grade  being  pretty  steep,  the 
directors  and  one  brakeman  have  no  doubt  gone 
back  to  the  starting  place. 

But  the  conductor  is  cool.  He  removes  his  bell- 
crowned  plug  hat,  and,  taking  out  his  orders  and 
time-card,  he  finds  that  the  track  is  clear,  and, 
looking  at  a  large,  valuable  Waterbury  watch,  pre- 
sented to  him  by  a  widow  whose  husband  was  run 
over  and  killed  by  the  train,  he  sees  he  can  still 
make  the  next  station  in  time  for  dinner.  He 
hires  a  livery  team  to  go  back  after  the  directors' 
coach,  and,  calling  "All  aboard,"  he  swings  lightly 
upon  the  moving  train. 

It  is  now  10  o'clock,  and  nineteen  weary  miles 
still  stretch  out  between  him  and  the  dinner  station. 
To  add  to  the  horrors  of  the  situation,  the  front 
brakeman  discovers  that  a  very  thirsty  boy  in  the 
emigrant  car  has  been  drinking  from  the  water- 
supply  tank  on  the  tender,  and  there  is  not  enough 
left  to  carry  the  train  through.  Much  time  is  con- 
sumed in  filling  the  barrel  again  at  a  spring  near 
the  track,  but  the  conductor  finds  a  "spotter"  on 
the  train,  and  gets  him  to  do  it.  He  also  induces 
him  to  cut  some  more  wood  and  clean  out  the  ashes. 

The  engineer  then  pulls  out  a  draw-head  and 
begins  to  make  up  time.  In  twenty  minutes  he 
has  made  up  an  hour's  time,  though  two  miles  of 
hoop-iron  are  torn  from  the  track  behind  him.  He 


100  BILL  NY&S 

sails  into  the  eating  station  on  time,  and,  while 
the  master  mechanic  takes  several  of  the  coach- 
wheels  over  to  the  machine-shop  to  soak,  he  eats 
a  hurried  lunch. 

The  brakeman  here  gets  his  tin  lanterns  ready 
for  the  night  run  and  fills  two  of  them  with  red  oil 
to  be  used  on  the  rear  coach.  The  fireman  puts  a 
fresh  bacon-rind  on  the  eccentric,  stuffs  some  more 
cotton  batting  around  the  axles,  puts  a  new  lynch- 
pin  in  the  hind  wheels,  sweeps  the  apple-peelings 
out  of  the  smoking  car,  and  he  is  ready. 

Then  comes  the  conductor,  with  his  plug  hat  full 
of  excursion  tickets,  orders,  passes,  and  time- 
checks;  he  looks  at  his  Waterbury  watch,  waves 
his  hand,  and  calls  "All  aboard"  again.  It  is  up- 
grade, however,  and  for  two  miles  the  "spotter"  has 
to  push  behind  with  all  his  might  before  the  con- 
ductor will  allow  him  to  get  on  and  ride. 

Thus  began  the  history  of  a  gigantic  enterprise 
which  has  grown  till  it  is  a  comfort,  a  convenience, 
a  luxury,  and  yet  a  necessity.  It  has  built  up  and 
beautified  the  desert.  It  has  crept  beneath  the 
broad  river,  scaled  the  snowy  mountain,  and  hung 
by  iron  arms  from  the  canon  and  the  precipice, 
carrying  the  young  to  new  lands  and  reuniting 
those  long  separated.  It  has  taken  the  hopeless 
to  lands  of  new  hope.  It  has  evaded  the  solitude 
of  the  wilderness,  spiked  down  valuable  land-grants, 


CORD  WOOD.  101 

killed  cheap  cattle  and  then  paid  a  high  price  for 
them,  whooped  through  valleys,  snorted  over  lofty 
peaks,  crept  through  long,  dark  tunnels,  turning 
the  bright  glare  of  day  suddenly  upon  those  who 
thought  the  tunnel  was  two  miles  long,  roared 
through  the  night  and  glittered  through  the  day, 
bringing  alike  the  groom  to  his  beautiful  bride  and 
the  weeping  prodigal  to  the  moss-grown  grave  of 
his  mother. 

You  are  indeed  a  heartless,  soulless  corporation, 
and  yet  you  are  very  essential  in  our  business. 


BILL  RYE'S 


HOW   OLD   BEINDLE   MET   HEE   DEATH   WITH   A   TRAIN. 


A    QUAINT    EPISTLE,  IN   WHICH  THE  HUMOKIST    GIVES    HIS 

EXPERIENCE  WITH   RAILROAD    OFFICIALS HOW 

HE    SECURED   PAY  FOR   A   COW. 

DEAR  HENRY  :  Your  letter  stating  that  you  had 
just  succeeded  in  running  your  face  for  a  new  cur- 
riculum is  at  hand  and  contents  noted,  as  the  feller 
said  when  I  wrote  to  him  two  years  ago  and  told 
him  that  his  cussed  railroad  had  mashed  old  Brin. 
You  remember  that  just  as  you  entered  on  what 
you  called  your  junior  year,  old  Brin  remained  out 
all  night,  and  your  mother  and  me  took  our  coffee 
milkless  in  the  morning. 


102  BILL  NYE^S 

Well,  I  went  down  to  the  pound  to  see  if  she 
had  registered  there,  but  she  hadn't  been  stopping 
there,  the  night  clerk  said.  He  maintained,  how- 
ever, that  "number  two- aught- eight" — as  he  called 
it — had  come  in  half  an  hour  late  with  a  cow's 
head  on  the  pilot  and  brindle  hair  on  the  runnin' 
gears  of  the  tender. 

So  I  went  over  to  the  station  and  found  Erin's 
head  there,  whereupon  I  went  down  the  track  in 
search  of  her,  though  I  feared  it  would  be  futile, 
as  you  once  said  about  administering  a  half 
sole  to  your  summer  pantaloons.  Well,  I  was 
right  about  it,  Henry.  If  I'd  been  in  the  futile 
business  for  years  I  couldn't  have  been  more  so 
than  I  was  on  this  occasion.  The  old  cow  was 
dead  and  so  identified  with  the  right  of  way,  that 
her  own  mother  would  not  have  known  her. 

I  spoke  to  the  conductor  about  it  and  he  said  it 
wasn't  on  his  run  and  for  me  to  see  the  other  con- 
ductor. Time  I  found  him  he  was  on  another  road 
and  killed  in  a  collision  with  a  lumber  train. 
Then  I  wrote  to  the  general  traffic  manager,  using 
great  care  to  spell  all  the  words  as  near  right  as 
possible,  and  he  didn't  reply  at  all.  His  hired 
man  wrote  me,  however,  with  a  printing  press,  that 
my  letter  had  been  received  and  contents  duly 
noted.  In  reply  would  say  that  the  general 
traffic  manager  was  then  attending  a  tripartite 


COED  WOOD.  103 

reunion  at  Chicago,  at  which  meeting  the  sub- 
ject of  cows  would  come  up.  He  said  that  there 
had  been  such  competition  between  the  Milwaukee, 
the  Northwestern  and  the  Kock  Island  in  the  mat- 
ter of  prices  paid  for  shattered  cows,  that  farmers 
got  to  dragging  their  debilitated  stock  on  the 
track  at  night  and  selling  it  to  the  roads,  after 
which  they  would  retire  from  business  on  their  ill- 
gotten  gains. 

When  the  general  traffic  manager  got  back  I 
went  in  to  see  him.  He  was  very  pleasant  with 
me,  but  said  he  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  dead 
cow  industry.  "Go  to  the  auditor  or  the  general 
solicitor,"  said  he,  "they  run  the  morgue."  But 
they  were  both  away  attending  a  large  Eastern 
mass  meeting  of  auditors  and  general  solicitors, 
where  they  where  discussing  the  practicability  of  a 
new  garnishee-proof  pay-car,  that  some  party  had 
patented,  they  said. 

So  I  went  home  and  wrote  to  the  auditor  a  nice, 
long,  fluent  letter  in  relation  to  the  cow  and  her 
merits.  I  told  him  that  it  wasn't  the  intrinsic 
value  of  the  cow  that  I  cared  about.  Intrinsic 
value  is  a  term  that  I  found  in  one  of  your  letters 
and  liked  very  much.  I  wrote  him  that  old  Brin 
was  an  heir-loom  and  a  noble  brute.  I  said  among 
other  things  that  she  had  never  been  antagonistic 
to  railroads.  She  had  rather  favored  them;  also 


104:  BILL 

that  her  habits  and  tastes  were  simple  and  that  she 
had  never  aspired  to  rise  above  her  station  in  life, 
and  why  she  should  rise  higher  than  the  station 
when  she  was  injured  I  could  not  understand.  I 
told  him  what  a  good  milkster  she  was,  and  also 
that  she  came  up  every  night  as  regular  as  an 
emetic. 

I  then  wrote  my  name  with  a  little  ornamental 
squirm  to  it,  added  a  postscript  in  which  I  said  that 
you  was  now  in  your  junior  year,  and  I  thought 
that  about  seventy-five  dollars  would  be  a  fair  quo- 
tation on  such  a  cow  as  I  had  feebly  described,  and 
said  good-by  to  him,  hoping  he  would  remit  at  a 
prior  date  if  possible. 

I  got  a  letter  after  awhile,  stating  that  my  favor 
of  the  25th  ult.  or  prox.  or  something  of  that  nature, 
had  been  duly  received  and  contents  noted.  This 
was  no  surprise  to  me,  because  that  is  too  often 
the  sad  fate  of  a  letter.  In  fact  the  same  thing 
had  happened  to  the  other  one  I  had  previously 
sent. 

I  was  mad,  and  wrote  to  the  president  of  the 
company  stating  in  crisp  language  that  if  his  com- 
yany  would  pay  more  cash  for  cows  and  do  less  in 
the  noting  and  contents  business,  he  would  be  more 
apt  to  endear  himself  to  those  who  reside  along  his 
line  and  who  had  their  horses  scared  to  death 
twice  a  day  by  his  arrogant  and  bellering  besom  of 


COED  WOOD.  105 

destruction.  "If  you  will  deal  more  in  scads  and 
less  in  stenography  and  monkey  business,"  says  I, 
in  closing,  "you  will  warm  yourself  into  the  hearts 
of  the  plain  people.  Otherwise"  I  says,  "we  will 
arise  in  our  might  and  walk." 

I  then,  in  a  humorsome  way,  marked  it  "dictated 
letter"  and  sent  it  away. 

I  got  it  back  in  the  face  by  way  of  the  dead-letter 
office  where  they  know  me.  I'll  bet  they  had  a 
good  laugh  over  it,  for  they  opened  it  and  read  it 
while  it  was  there.  I  wouldn't  be  surprised  if 
every  man  in  Congress  had  a  good  hearty  laugh 
over  that  letter.  Congressmen  enjoy  a  good  thing 
once  in  a  while,  Henry.  They  ain't  so  dumb  as 
they  look. 

But  I -finally  got  my  pay  for  old  Brin,  to  make 
a  long  story  short.  They  cut  me  down  some  on 
the  price,  but  I  finally  got  my  money.  No  railroad 
company  can  run  over  a  cow  of  mine  and  mix  her 
up  with  a  trestle  three-quarters  of  a  mile  long, 
without  paying  for  it,  and  favors  received  and  con- 
tents duly  noted  don't  go  with 

Your  father, 

BILL  NYE. 


106  BILL 


BILL 

ATTENDS   A   WESTEKN   THEATEE   AND    SEES   A 
EEMAEKABLE    SHOOTING   AFFKAY. 

Those  were  troublesome  times,  indeed,  when  we 
were  trying  to  settle  up  the  new  world  and  a  few 
other  matters  at  the  same  time. 

Little  do  the  soft-eyed  sons  of  prosperity  under- 
stand to-day,  as  they  walk  the  paved  streets  of  the 
west  under  the  cold  glitter  of  the  electric  light, 
surrounded  by  all  that  can  go  to  make  life  sweet 
and  desirable,  that  not  many  years  ago  on  that 
same  ground  their  fathers  fought  the  untutored 
savage  by  night  and  chased  the  bounding  buffalo 
by  day. 

All,  all  is  changed.  Time  in  his  restless  and 
resistless  flight  has  filed  away  those  early  years  in 
the  county  clerk's  office,  and  these  times  are  not 
the  old  times.  With  the  march  of  civilization  I 
notice  that  it  is  safer  for  a  man  to  attend  a  theatre 
than  in  the  early  days  of  the  wild  and  wooly  west. 
Time  has  made  it  easier  for  one  to  go  to  the  opera 
and  bring  his  daylights  home  with  him  than  it  used 
to  be. 

It  seems  but  a  few  short  years  since  my  room- 
mate came  home  one  night  with  a  long  red  furrow 
plowed  along  the  top  of  his  head,  where  some  gen- 
tleman at  the  theatre  had  shot  him  by  mistake. 


CORDWOOD.  107 

My  room-mate  said  that  a  tall  man  had  objected  to 
the  pianist  and  suggested  that  he  was  playing  pian- 
issimo when  he  should  have  played  fortissimo,  and 
trouble  grew  out  of  this  which  had  ended  in  the 
death  of  the  pianist  and  the  injury  of  several  dis- 
interested spectators. 

And  yet  the  excitement  of  knowing  that  you 
might  be  killed  at  any  moment  made  the  theatre 
more  attractive,  and  instead  of  scaring  men  away 
it  rather  induced  patronage.  Of  course  it  pre- 
vented the  attendance  of  ladies  who  were  at  all 
timid,  but  it  did  not  cause  any  falling  off  in  the 
receipts.  Some  thought  it  aided  a  good  deal,  es- 
pecially where  the  show  itself  didn't  have  much 
blood  in  it. 

The  Bella  Union  was  a  pretty  fair  sample  of  the 
theatre  in  those  days.  It  was  a  low  wooden 
structure  with  a  perpetual  band  on  the  outside,  that 
played  gay  and  festive  circus  tunes  early  and  often. 
Inside  you  could  poison  your  soul  at  the  bar  and 
see  the  show  at  one  and  the  same  price  of  admis- 
sion. In  an  adjoining  room  silent  men  joined  the 
hosts  of  faro  and  the  timid  tenderfoot  gamboled 
o'er  the  green. 

I  visited  this  place  of  amusement  one  evening 
in  the  capacity  of  a  reporter  for  the  paper.  I 
would  not  admit  this,  even  at  this  late  day,  only 
that  it  has  been  overlooked  in  Mr.  Talmage  since ; 


11 

V 


108  BILL  NYE'S 

and  if  he  could  go  through  such  an  ordeal  in  the 
interests  of  humanity,  I  might  be  forgiven  for 
going  there  professionally  to  write  up  the  show 
for  our  amusement  column. 

The  programme  was  quite  varied.  Negro  min- 
strelsy, sleight-of-hand,  opera  boufle,  high  tragedy, 
and  that  oriental  style  of  quadrille  called  the  khan- 
khan,  if  my  sluggish  memory  be  not  at  fault, 
formed  the  principal  attractions  of  the  evening. 

At  about  10:30  or  11  o'clock  the  khan-khan  was 
produced  upon  the  stage.  In  the  midst  of  it  a  tall 
man  rose  up  at  the  back  of  the  hall,  and  came  firm- 
ly down  the  aisle  with  a  large,  earnest  revolver  in 
his  right  hand.  He  was  a  powerfully  built  man, 
with  a  dyed  mustache  and  wicked  eye  on  each  side 
of  his  thin,  red  nose.  He  threw  up  the  revolver 
with  a  little  click  that  sounded  very  loud  to  me, 
for  he  had  stopped  right  behind  me  and  rested  his 
left  hand  on  my  shoulder  as  he  gazed  over  on  the 
stage.  I  could  distinctly  hear  his  breath  come  and 
go,  for  it  was  a  very  loud  breath,  with  the  odor  of 
onions  and  emigrant  whisky  upon  it. 

The  orchestra  paused  in  the  middle  of  a  snort, 
and  the  man  whose  duty  it  was  to  swallow  the  clar- 
ionet pulled  seven  or  eight  inches  of  the  instrument 
out  of  his  face  and  looked  wildly  around.  The 
gentleman  who  had  been  agitating  the  feelings  of 
the  bass  viol  laid  it  down  on  the  side,  crawled  in 


CORD  WOOD.  109 

behind  it,  and  spread  a  sheet  of  music  over  his 
head. 

The  stage  manager  came  forward  to  the  foot- 
lights and  inquired  what  was  wanted.  The  tall 
man  with  the  self-cocking  credentials  answered 
simply : 

"By  Dashety  Blank  to  Blank  Blank  and  back 
again,  I  want  my  wife!" 

The  manager  stepped  back  into  the  wings  for  a 
moment,  and  when  he  came  forward  he  also  had  a 
large  musical  instrument  such  as  Mr.  Eemington 
used  to  make  before  he  went  into  the  type-writer 
business.  I  can  still  remember  how  large  the  hole 
in  the  barrel  looked  to  me,  and  how  I  wished  that 
I  had  gone  to  the  meeting  of  the  Literary  club 
that  evening,  as  I  had  at  first  intended  to  do. 

Literature  was  really  more  in  my  line  than  the 
drama.  I  still  thought  that  it  was  not  too  late, 
perhaps,  and  so  I  rose  and  went  out  quietly  so  as 
not  to  disturb  any  one,  and  as  I  went  down  the 
aisle  the  tall  man  and  stage  manager  exchanged 
regrets. 

I  looked  back  in  time  to  see  the  tall  man  fall  in 
the  aisles  with  his  face  in  the  sawdust  and  his 
hand  over  his  breast.  Then  I  went  out  of  the  thea- 
tre in  an  aimless  sort  of  way,  taking  a  northeast- 
erly direction  as  the  crow  flies.  I  do  not  think  I 
ran  over  a  mile  or  two  in  this  way  before  I  discov- 


110  BILL 

ered  that  I  was  going  directly  away  from  home.  I 
rested  awhile  and  then  returned. 

On  the  street  I  met  the  stage  manager  and  the 
tall,  dark  man  just  as  they  were  coming  out  of  the 
Moss  Agate  saloon.  They  said  they  were  very  sor- 
ry to  notice  that  I  got  up  and  came  away  at  a  point 
in  the  programme  where  they  had  introduced  what 
they  had  regarded  as  the  best  feature  of  the  show. 

This  incident  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  turn- 
ing my  attention  in  the  direction  of  literature 
instead  of  the  drama. 

But  I  am  glad  to  notice  that  many  of  the  horrors 
of  the  drama  are  being  gradually  eliminated  as  the 
country  gets  more  thickly  settled,  and  the  gory 
tragedy  of  a  few  years  ago  is  gradually  giving  place 
to  the  refining  influences  of  the  "Tin  Soldier"  and 
"A  Bag  Baby." 

FAVORED  p  ]?IGHEI^  FINE.' 

THE   BOY   WHO   MADE    A   DOLLAR   BY   A   WHIPPING. 


BILL    NYE. 


Will  Taylor,  the  son  of  the  present  American 
consul  at  Marseilles,  was  a  good  deal  like  other 
boys  while  at  school  in  his  old  home  in  Hudson, 
Wis.  One  day  he  called  his  father  into  the  library 
and  said : 


COED  WOOD.  Ill 

"  Pa,  I  don't  like  to  tell  you,  but  the  teacher  and 
I  have  had  trouble." 

"What's  the  matter  now?" 

"  Well,  I  cut  one  of  the  desks  a  little  with  my 
knife,  and  the  teacher  says  I've  got  to  pay  $1  or 
take  a  lickin' !  " 

"  Well,  why  don't  you  take  the  lickin'  and  say 
nothing  more  about  it?  I  can  stand  considerable 
physical  pain,  so  long  as  it  visits  our  family  in  that 
form.  Of  course  it  is  not  pleasant  to  be  flogged, 
but  you  have  broken  a  rule  of  the  school,  and  I 
guess  you'll  have  to  stand  it.  I  presume  that  the 
teacher  will  in  wrath  remember  mercy  and  avoid 
disabling  you,  so  that  you  can't  get  your  coat  on 
any  more." 

"  But,  pa,  I  feel  mighty  bad  over  it,  already,  and 
if  you  would  pay  my  fine,  I'd  never  do  it  again. 
A  dollar  isn't  much  to  you,  pa,  but  it's  a  heap  to  a 
boy  who  hasn't  a  cent.  If  I  could  make  a  dollar 
as  easy  as  you  can,  pa,  I'd  never  let  my  little  boy 
get  flogged  that  way  to  save  a  dollar.  If  I  had  a 
little  feller  that  got  licked  bekuz  I  did'nt  put  up 
for  him  I'd  hate  the  sight  of  money  always.  I'd 
feel  as  ef  every  dollar  I  had  in  my  pocket  had  been 
taken  out  of  my  little  kid's  back." 

"Well,  now,  I'll  tell  you  what  I'U  do.  I'll  give 
you  a  dollar  to  save  you  from  punishment  this 
time,  but  if  anything  of  this  kind  ever  occurs  again 


BILL  NYKS 

I'll  hold  yon  while  the  teacher  licks  you  and  then 
I'll  get  the  teacher  to  hold  you  while  I  lick  you. 
That's  the  way  I  feel  about  that.  If  you  want  to 
go  around  whittling  up  our  educational  institutions 
you  can  do  so ;  but  you  will  have  to  purchase  them 
afterward  yourself.  I  don't  propose  to  buy  any 
more  damaged  furniture.  You  probably  grasp  my 
meaning,  do  you  not?  I  send  you  to  school  to  ac- 
quire an  education,  not  to  acquire  liabilities,  so 
that  you  can  come  around  and  make  an  assessment 
on  me.  I  feel  a  great  interest  in  you,  Willie,  but 
I  do  not  feel  as  though  it  should  be  an  assessable 
interest.  I  want  to  go  on  of  course  and  improve 
the  property,  but  when  I  pay  my  dues  on  it,  I 
want  to  know  that  it  goes  toward  development 
work.  I  don't  want  my  assessments  to  go  toward 
the  purchase  of  a  school-desk  with  American  hier- 
oglyphics carved  on  it.  I  hope  you  will  bear  this 
in  mind,  my  son,  and  beware.  It  will  be  greatly 
to  your  interest  to  beware.  If  I  were  in  your  place 
I  would  put  in  a  large  portion  of  my  time  in  the 
beware  business." 

The  boy  took  the  dollar  and  went  thoughtfully 
away  to  school  and  no  more  was  ever  said  about 
the  matter  until  Mr.  Taylor  learned  casually  several 
months  later  that  the  Spartan  youth  had  received 
the  walloping  and  filed  away  the  $1  for  future  refer- 
ence. The  boy  was  afterward  heard  to  say  that  he 


COED  WOOD.  113 

favored  a  much  higher  fine  in  cases  of  that  kind. 
One  whipping  was  sufficient,  he  said,  but  he  favored 
a  fine  of  $5.  It  ought  to  be  severe  enough  to 
make  it  an  object. 


F>ow     BILL    HYE    FAILED    mo    GQAI^E     THE 

AMENDE    ]?ONO^ABLE — fl    BATHETIC 

INCIDENT. 

It  is  rather  interesting  to  watch  the  manner  by 
which  old  customs  have  been  slightly  changed  and 
handed  down  from  age  to  age.  Peculiarities  of  old 
traditions  still  linger  among  us,  and  are  forked  over 
to  posterity  like  a  wappy-jawed  tea-pot  or  a  long- 
time mortgage.  No  one  can  explain  it,  but  the 
fact  still  remains  patent  that  some  of  the  oddities 
of  our  ancestors  continue  to  appear  from  time  to 
time  clothed  in  the  changing  costumes  of  the  pre- 
vailing fashions. 

Along  with  these  choice  antiquities  and  carrying 
the  nut-brown  flavor  of  the  dead  and  relentless  orig- 
inal amende  in  which  the  offender  appeared  in  public 
clothed  only  in  a  cotton  flannel  shirt  and  with  a 
rope  around  his  neck  as  an  evidence  of  a  former 
recantation  down  to  this  day  when  (sometimes)  the 
pale  editor  in  a  stickfull  of  type  admits  that  "his 
informant  was  in  error,"  the  amende  honorable  has 
marched  along  with  the  easy  tread  of  time.  The 


114  BILL  NYE'S 

blue-eyed  moulder  of  public  opinion,  with  one  sus- 
pender hanging  down  at  his  side  and  writing  on  a 
sheet  of  news-copy  paper,  has  a  more  extensive 
costume  perhaps  than  the  old-time  offender  who 
bowed  in  the  dust  in  the  midst  of  the  great  popu- 
lace and  with  a  halter  under  his  ear  admitted  his 
offense,  but  he  does  not  feel  any  more  cheerful 
over  it. 

I  have  been  called  upon  several  times  to  make 
the  amende  honorable,  and  I  admit  that  it  is  not 
an  occasion  of  much  mirth  and  merriment.  Peo- 
ple who  come  into  the  editorial  office  to  invest  in 
a  retraction  are  generally  healthy,  and  have  a  stiff, 
reserved  manner  that  no  cheerfulness  or  hospitality 
can  soften. 

I  remember  an  incident  of  this  kind  which  oc- 
curred last  summer  in  my  office  while  I  was  writing 
something  scathing.  A  large  man  with  an  air  of 
profound  perspiration  about  him  and  a  plaid  flannel 
shirt,  stepped  into  the  middle  of  the  room  and 
breathed  in  all  the  air  that  I  was  not  using.  He 
said  he  would  give  me  four  minutes  in  which  to 
retract,  and  pulled  out  a  watch  by  which  to  ascer- 
tain the  exact  time.  I  asked  him  if  he  would  not 
allow  me  a  moment  or  two  to  step  over  to  a  tele- 
graph office  to  wire  my  parents  of  my  awful  death. 
He  said  I  could  walk  out  that  door  when  I  walked 
over  his  dead  body.  Then  I  waited  a  long  time, 


COED  WOOD.  115 

till  he  told  me  my  time  was  up,  and  asked  me  what 
I  was  waiting  for.  I  told  him  I  was  waiting  for 
him  to  die  so  that  I  could  walk  over  his  dead  body. 
How  could  I  walk  over  a  corpse  until  life  was 

extinct  ? 

***** 

He  stood  and  looked  at  me,  at  first  in  astonish- 
ment, afterward  in  pity.  Finally  tears  welled  up 
in  his  eyes  and  plowed  their  way  down  his  broad 
and  grimy  face.  Then  he  said  I  need  not  fear  him. 

"You  are  safe,"  said  he.  "A  youth  who  is  so 
patient  and  cheerful  as  you  are,  one  who  would 
wait  for  a  healthy  man  to  die  so  you  could  meander 
over  his  pulseless  remnants,  ought  not  to  die  a  vio- 
lent deathv  A  soft-eyed  seraph  like  you,  who  is  no 
more  conversant  with  the  ways  of  the  world  than 
that,  ought  to  be  put  in  a  glass  vial  of  alcohol  and 
preserved.  I  came  up  here  to  kill  you  and  throw 
you  into  the  rain-water  barrel,  but  now  that  I  know 
what  a  patient  disposition  you  have,  I  shudder  to 
think  of  the  crime  I  was  about  to  commit." 


SEEING       SAW  ffliLL. 


BILL     NYE. 


I  have  just  returned  from  a  little  trip  up  from 
the  North  Wisconsin  Railway,  where  I  went   to 


116  BILL 

catch  a  string  of  cod-fish  and  anything  else  that 
might  be  contagious. 

Northern  Wisconsin  is  the  place  where  they  yank 
a  hig  wet  log  into  a  mill  and  turn  it  into  cash  as 
quick  as  a  railroad  man  can  draw  his  salary  out  of 
the  pay-car.  The  log  is  held  on  a  carriage  by 
means  of  iron  dogs  while  it  is  being  worked  into 
lumber.  These  iron  dogs  are  not  like  those  we  see 
on  the  front  steps  of  a  brown  stone  front  occasion- 
ally. They  are  another  breed  of  dogs. 

The  managing  editor  of  the  mill  lays  out  the  log 
in  his  mind  and  works  it  into  dimension  stuff,  shin- 
gles, bolts,  slabs,  edgings,  two-by-fours,  two-by- 
eighfcs,  two-by-sixes,  etc.,  so  as  to  use  the  goods  to 
the  best  advantage,  just  as  a  woman  takes  a  dress- 
pattern  and  cuts  it  so  she  won't  have  to  piece  the 
front  breadths  and  will  still  have  enough  left  to 
make  a  polonaise  for  last  summer's  gown. 

I  stood  there  for  a  long  time  watching  the  var- 
ious saws  and  listening  to  the  monstrous  growl  and 
wishing  that  I  had  been  born  a  successful  timber- 
thief  instead  of  a  poor  boy  without  a  rag  to  my 
back. 

At  one  of  these  mills  not  long  ago,  a  man 
backed  up  to  get  away  from  the  carriage  and 
thoughtlessly  backed  against  a  large  saw  that  was 
revolving  at  the  rate  of  about  200  times  a  minute. 
The  saw  took  a  large  chew  of  tobacco  from  the 


CORDWOOD.  117 

plug  he  had  in  his  pistol  pocket  and  then  began  on 
him. 

But  there's  no  use  going  into  the  details.  Such 
things  are  not  cheerful.  They  gathered  him  up 
out  of  the  saw-dust  and  put  him  in  a  nail  keg  and 
carried  him  away,  but  he  did  not  speak  again. 
Life  was  quite  extinct.  Whether  it  was  the  ner- 
vous shock  that  killed  him,  or  the  concussion  of 
the  cold  saw  against  his  liver  that  killed  him  no 
one  ever  knew. 

The  mill  shut  down  a  couple  of  hours  so  that  the 
head  sawyer  could  file  his  saw,  and  then  work 
was  resumed  once  more. 

We  should  learn  from  this  never  to  lean  on  the 
buzz-saw  when  it  moveth  itself  aright. 


Fiow  A  SHINAMAN  I^IDES  JFHB  UNTAMED 

BRONCHO. 


BILL   NYE. 

A  Chinaman  does  not  grab  the  bit  of  a  broncho 
and  yank  it  around  till  the  noble  beast  can  see  thir- 
teen new  and  peculiar  kinds  of  fire-works,  or  kick 
him  in  the  stomach,  or  knock  his  ribs  loose,  or 
swear  at  him  until  the  firmament  gets  loose  and 
begins  to  roll  together  like  a  scroll,  but  he  gets  on 


118  BILL 

the  wrong  side  and  slides  into  the  saddle  and  smiles 
and  says  something  like  what  a  guinea  hen  would 
say  if  she  got  excited  and  tried  to  repeat  one  of 
Bjoernstjerne  Bjoernson's  poems  backward  in  his 
native  tongue.  At  first  the  broncho  seems  tempor- 
arily rattled,  but  by-and-by  he  shoots  athwart  the 
sunny  sky  like  a  thing  of  life  and  comes  down  with 
his  legs  in  a  cluster  like  a  bunch  of  asparagus. 

This  will  throw  a  Chinaman's  liver  into  the 
northwest  corner  of  his  throat,  and  his  upper  left 
hand  duodessimo  into  the  middle  of  next  week, 
but  he  doesn't  complain.  He  opens  his  mouth  and 
breaths  in  all  of  the  atmosphere  the  rest  of  the  uni- 
verse can  spare,  and  tickles  the  broncho  on  the 
starboard  quarter  with  his  cork  sole.  The  mirth- 
provoking  movement  throws  the  broncho  into  the 
wildest  hysterics,  and  for  some  minutes  the  specta- 
tor doesn't  see  anything  very  distinctly.  The 
autumnal  twilight  seems  fraught  with  blonde  bron- 
cho and  pale-blue  shirt  tail  and  Chinaman  moving 
in  an  irregular  orbit,  and  occasionally  throwing  off 
meteoric  articles  of  apparel  and  pre-historic  chunks 
of  ingenious  profanity  of  the  vintage  of  Confucius. 
When  the  sky  clears  up  a  little  the  Chinaman's 
hair  is  down  and  in  wild  profusion  about  his 
olive  features.  His  shirt  flap  is  very  much  frayed, 
like  an  American  flag  that  has  snapped  in  the 
breeze  for  thirteen  weeks. 


CORD  WOOD.  119 

He  finds  also  that  he  has  telescoped  his  spinal 
column  and  jammed  two  ribs  through  the  right 
superior  duplex,  has  two  or  three  vertebrae  floating 
about  through  his  system  that  he  doesn't  know 
what  to  do  with.  In  fact,  the  Chinaman  is  a  ro- 
bust ruin,  while  the  broncho  is  still  in  a  good  state 
of  preservation.  Now  the  broncho  humps  his  back 
up  into  a  circumambient  atmosphere,  and  when  he 
once  bisects  the  earth's  orbit  and  jabs  his  feet  into 
the  trembling  earth  a  shapeless  mass  of  brocaded 
silk  and  coarse  black  hair  and  taper  nails  and  cel- 
estial shirt-tails  and  oolong  profanity  and  disorgan- 
ized Chinese  remains  comes  down  apparently  from 
the  New  Jerusalem,  and  the  coroner  goes  out  on 
the  street  to  get  six  good  men  and  a  chemist,  and 
they  analyze  the  collection.  They  report  that  the 
deceased  had  come  to  his  death  by  reasons  of  con- 
cussion, induced  by  a  ride  from  the  outer  battle- 
ments of  the  sweet  by-and-by. 


BILL  HYE  CHANTS  TO  I^NOW  P?ow  mo 

GAME. 


SLIPPEKYELMHUKST,  HUDSON,  Wis.,  Oct.  6.  —  To 
the  Editor:  Might  I  ask,  through  the  column  of 
your  justly  celebrated  paper,  if  any  one  will  give 
me  the  requisite  information  regarding  the  care  of 
game  during  the  winter? 


120  BILL  NY&S 

My  preserves  are  located  on  my  estate  here  at 
Slipperyelmhurst,  and  while  I  am  absent  lecturing 
in  the  winter,  in  answer  to  the  loud  calls  of  the 
puhlic,  I  am  afraid  that  my  game  may  not  have  the 
proper  care,  and  that  unscrupulous  people  may 
scalp  my  fox  and  poach  the  eggs  of  my  pheasants. 

Besides,  I  am  rather  ignorant  of  the  care  of 
game,  and  I  would  like  to  be  able  to  instruct  my 
game-keeper  when  I  go  away  as  to  his  duties. 

The  game-keeper  at  Slipperyelmhurst  is  what 
might  be  called  a  self-made  game-keeper.  He 
never  had  any  instruction  in  his  profession,  aside 
from  a  slight  amount  of  training  in  high-low-jack. 
Therefore  he  has  won  his  way  unassisted  to  the 
position  he  now  occupies. 

What  I  wish  most  of  all  is  to  understand  the 
methods  of  preserving  game  during  the  winter  so 
that  when  it  is  scarce  in  the  spring  I  can  take  a 
can-opener  and  astonish  people  with  my  own  pre- 
serves. 

My  fox  succeeded  in  getting  through  the  sum- 
mer in  fine  form.  I  got  him  from  Long  Island 
where  the  sportsmen  from  New  York  had  tried  to 
hunt  him  for  several  seasons,  but  with  indifferent 
success.  He  was  not  well  broken  in  the  first  place, 
I  presume,  and  the  noise  of  the  hounds  and  do- 
mesticated Englishmen  in  full  cry  no  doubt  fright- 
ened him.  He  is  still  timid  and  more  or  less 


COED  WOOD.  121 

afraid  of  the  cars.    He  shies,  too,  when  I  lead  him 
past  an  imitation   Englishman.     He   is  in  good 
health,  this  fall,  however,  and  as  I  got  him  at  a  low 
price  I  am  greatly  pleased.     Very  likely  the  reason 
he  did  not  give  good  satisfaction  in  New  York  was 
that  those  who  used  him  did  not  employ  a  good 
earth-stopper.     Much  depends  on   this  man.     Of 
what  use  is  an  active,  robust  and  well-broken  fox, 
well  started,  if  he  be  permitted  to  get  back  into  his 
hole?     I  have  employed  as  an  earth-stopper  a  gen- 
tleman who  saws  my  wood  during  the  winter  and 
who  assists  us  in  fox-hunting  in  the  hunting  season. 
Born  in  a  quiet  little  rural  village  called  Mar- 
telle,  in  Pierce  county,  Wisconsin,  he  early  evinced 
a  strong  love  for  sport.     Day  after  day  he  would 
abstain  from  going  to  school  that  he  might  go  forth 
into  the  woods  and  study  the  habits  of  the  chip- 
munk.    For  five  years  his  health  was  impaired  to 
such  a  degree  that  he  was  not  well  enough  to  safely 
attend  school,  but  just   barely  robust  enough  to 
drag  himself  away  to  a  distance  of  fourteen  miles, 
where  he  could  snare  suckers  and  try  to  regain  his 
health.     To  climb  a  lightning-rod  and  skin  off  the 
copper  wire  for  snaring  purposes  with  him  was  but 
the  work  of  a  moment.     To  go  joyously  afield  day 
after  day  and  drown  out  the  gopher,  while  other 
boys  were  compelled  to  gopher  an  education,  was 
his  chief  delight. 


122  BILL 

As  a  result  of  this  course  he  is  not  a  close  stu- 
dent of  books,  but  he  can  skin  a  squirrel  without 
the  slightest  embarrassment,  and  you  could  wake 
him  up  suddenly  out  of  a  profound  slumber  and 
ascertain  from  him  exactly  what  the  best  method 
is  for  draping  a  frog  over  a  pickerel  hook  so  as  to 
produce  the  best  and  most  pleasing  effects.  Such 
is  the  description  of  a  man  who,  by  his  own  unaided 
exertions,  has  risen  to  the  proud  position  of  earth- 
stopper  on  my  estate. 

He  is  ignorant  of  the  care  of  wild  game,  however, 
and  says  he  has  never  preserved  any.  We  want  to 
know  whether  it  would  be  best  to  sprinkle  our  fox 
with  camphor  and  put  him  down  cellar  or  let  him 
run  in  the  henhouse  during  the  winter. 

Would  your  readers  please  say,  also,  if  any  of 
them  have  had  any  experience  in  fox-hunting, 
what  is  the  best  treatment  for  a  horse  which  has 
injured  himself  on  a  barbed- wire  fence  while  in 
rapid  pursuit  of  the  fox?  I  have  a  fine  fox-hunter 
that  I  bought  two  years  ago  from  a  milkman. 
This  horse  was  quite  high-spirited,  and  while  the 
hounds  were  in  full  cry  one  day  I  had  to  take  a 
barbed-wire  fence  with  him.  This  horse,  which 
I  call  Isosceles,  because  he  is  one  kind  of  a  trian- 
gle, went  over  the  fence  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
catch  the  pit  of  his  stomach  on  the  barbed  wire  and 
expose  his  interior  department  and  its  methods  to 


CO  ED  WOOD.  123 

the  casual  spectator.  We  put  back  all  the  stomachs 
we  thought  he  was  entitled  to,  but  he  has  not  done 
well  since  that,  and  I  have  often  thought  that  pos- 
sibly we  did  not  succeed  in  returning  all  his  works. 
How  many  stomachs  has  the  adult  horse?  I  am 
utterly  and  sadly  ignorant  in  these  matters  and  I 
yearn  for  light. 

I  certainly  favor  a  more  thorough  knowledge  of 
animal  anatomy  on  the  part  of  our  school-children. 

Every  child  should  know  how  many  stomachs, 
bowels  and  gizzards  there  are  in  the  fully  equipped 
cow  or  horse.  Nothing  is  more  embarassing  to  the 
true  sportsman  than  to  see  his  favorite  horse  ripped 
open  by  a  barbed- wire  fence  while  in  full  chase, 
and  then  not  know  which  digestive  organ  should 
go  back  first,  or  when  they  have  all  been  replaced. 

So  far  as  Isosceles  is  concerned,  I  remember 
thinking  at  the  time  that  we  must  have  put  back 
inside  of  his  system  about  twice  as  much  digestive 
apparatus  as  he  had  before,  as  my  earth-stopper 
said  that  we  had  given  that  horse  enough  for  a 
four-horse  team,  and  yet  he  is  ill. 

I  would  like  to  hear  from  any  of  the  fox-hunters 
in  Cook  county  who  may  have  had  a  similar  ex- 
perience. 


124  BILL 


BILL  HYB  PJPJPENDS  BOOTH'S  " 

CLEVELAND,  0.,  Oct.  27,  1886. 

Last  evening  I  went  to  hear  Mr.  Edwin  Booth 
in  "Hamlet.  "  I  had  read  the  play  before,  but  it  was 
better  as  he  gave  it,  I  think. 

The  play  of  "Hamlet"  is  not  catchy,  and  there  is 
a  noticeable  lack  of  local  gags  in  it.  A  gentleman 
who  stood  up  behind  me  and  leaned  against  his 
breath  all  the  evening  said  that  he  thought  Ophe- 
lia's singing  was  too  disconnected.  He  is  a  keen 
observer  and  has  seen  a  great  many  plays.  He 
went  out  frequently  between  the  acts,  and  always 
came  back  in  better  spirits.  He  noticed  that  I 
wept  a  little  in  one  or  two  places,  and  said  that  if 
I  thought  that  was  effecting  I  ought  to  see  "  Only 
a  Farmer's  Daughter."  He  drives  a  'bus  for  the 
Hollenden  Hotel  here  and  has  seen  a  great  deal  of 
life.  Still,  he  talked  freely  with  me  through  the 
evening,  and  told  me  what  was  coming  next.  He 
is  a  great  admirer  of  the  drama,  and  night  after 
night  he  may  be  seen  in  the  foyer,  accompanied 
only  by  his  breath. 

There  is  considerable  discussion  among  critics 
as  to  whether  Hamlet  was  really  insane  or  not,  but 
I  think  that  he  assumed  it  in  order  to  throw  the 
prosecution  off  the  track,  for  he  was  a  very  smart 
man,  and  when  his  uncle  tried  to  work  off  some  of 


CORD  WOOD.  125 

his  Danish  prevarications  on  him  I  fully  expected 
him  to  pull  a  card  out  of  his  pocket  and  present  it 
to  his  royal  talhiess,  on  which  might  be  seen  the 
legend : 

I   AM    SOMETHING   OF   A   LIAB   MYSELF! 

But  I  am  glad  he  did  not,  for  it  would  have  seemed 
out  of  character  in  a  play  like  that. 

Mr.  Booth  wore  a  dark,  water-proof  cloak  all  the 
evening  and  a  sword  with  which  he  frequently 
killed  people.  He  was  dressed  in  black  throughout, 
with  hair  of  the  same  shade.  He  is  using  the 
same  hair  in  "Hamlet"  that  he  did  twenty  years 
ago,  though  he  uses  less  of  it.  He  wears  black 
knickerbockers  and  long,  black,  crockless  stock- 
ings. 

Mr.  Booth  is  doing  well  in  the  acting  business, 
frequently  getting  as  high  as  $2  apiece  for  tickets 
to  his  performances.  He  was  encored  by  the  audi- 
ence several  times  last  night,  but  refrained  from 
repeating  the  play,  fearing  that  it  would  make  it 
late  for  those  who  had  to  go  back  to  Belladonna, 
0.,  after  the  close  of  the  entertainment. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  play  a  little  rough  on  rats 
gets  into  the  elderberry  wine  and  the  royal  family 
drink  it,  after  which  there  is  considerable  excite- 
ment, and  a  man  with  a  good,  reliable  stomach- 
pump  would  have  all  he  could  do.  Several  of  the 
royal  family  curl  up  and  perish. 


126  BILL 

They  do  not  die  in  the  house. 

During  an  interview  between  Hamlet  and  his 
mother  an  old  gentleman  who  has  the  honor  to  be 
Ophelia's  father  hides  behind  a  picket  fence,  so  as 
to  overhear  the  conversation.  He  gets  excited  and 
says  something  in  a  low,  gutter al  tone  of  voice, 
whereupon  Hamlet  runs  his  sword  through  the 
picket  fence  in  such  a  way  as  to  bore  a  large  hole 
into  the  old  man,  who  then  dies. 

I  have  heard  a  great  many  people  speak  the 
piece  beginning — 

To  be  or  not  to  be, 

but  Mr.  Booth  does  it  better  than  any  one  I  have 
ever  heard.  I  once  heard  an  elocutionist — kind  of 
a  smart  Alickutionist  as  my  friend  The  Hoosier 
Poet  would  say.  This  man  recited  "To  be  or  not 
to  be"  in  a  manner  which,  he  said,  had  frequently 
brought  tears  to  eyes  unused  to  weep.  He  recited 
it  with  his  right  hand  socked  into  his  bosom  up  to 
the  elbow  and  his  fair  hair  tossed  about  over  his 
brow.  His  teeming  brain,  which  claimed  to  be 
kind  of  a  four-horse  teaming  brain,  as  it  were, 
seemed  to  be  on  fire,  and  to  all  appearances  he  was 
indeed  mad.  So  were  the  people  who  listened  to 
him.  He  hissed  it  through  his  clinched  teeth  and 
snorted  it  through  his  ripe,  red  nose,  wailed  it  up 
into  the  ceiling,  and  bleated  it  down  the  aisles, 
rolled  it  over  and  over  against  the  rafters  of  his  re- 


COED  WOOD.  127 

verberating  mouth,  handed  it  out  in  big  capsules, 
or  hissed  it  through  his  puckered  atomizer  of  a 
mouth,  wailed  and  bellowed  like  a  wild  and  mad- 
dened tailless  steer  in  fly-time,  darted  across  the 
stage  like  a  headless  hen,  ripped  the  gentle  atmos- 
phere into  shreds  with  his  guinea-hen  voluntary, 
bowed  to  us,  and  teetered  off  the  stage. 

Mr.  Booth  does  not  hoist  his  shoulders  and  settle 
back  on  his  "pastern  jints"  like  a  man  who  is  about 
to  set  a  refractory  brake  on  a  coal  car,  neither  does 
he  immerse  his  right  arm  in  his  bosom  up  to  the 
second  joint.  He  seems  to  have  the  idea  that 
Hamlet  spoke  these  lines  mostly  because  he  felt 
like  saying  something  instead  of  doing  it  to  intro- 
duce a  set  of  health-lift  gestures  and  a  hoarse,  bar- 
itone snort. 

A  head  of  dank  hair,  a  low,  mellow,  union-depot 
tone  of  voice,  and  a  dark-blue,  three  sheet  poster 
will  not  make  a  successful  Hamlet,  and  blessed  be 
the  man  who  knows  this  without  experimenting  on 
the  people  till  he  has  bunions  on  his  immortal  soul. 
I  have  sent  a  note  to  Mr.  Booth  this  morning  ask- 
ing him  to  call  at  my  room,  No.  6f ,  and  saying  that 
I  would  give  him  my  idea  about  the  drama  from  a 
purely  unpartisan  standpoint,  but  it  is  raining  so 
fast  now  that  I  fear  he  will  not  be  able  to  come. 


128  BILL  NYE'S 

BILL  HYE'S 

TO  A  YOUTH  ABOUT  DEUGS  AND  WEITING. 

Mr.  Bill  Nye,  Hudson,  Wis. — DEAE  SIE  :  I  hope 
you  will  pardon  me  for  addressing  you  on  a  matter 
of  pure  business,  but  I  have  heard  that  you  are 
not  averse  to  going  out  of  your  way  to  do  a  favor 
now  and  then  to  those  who  are  sincere  and  appre- 
ciative. 

I  have  learned  from  a  friend  that  you  have  been 
around  all  over  the  west,  and  so  I  have  taken  the 
liberty  of  writing  you  to  ask  what  you  think  would 
be  the  chances  of  success  for  a  young  man  if  he 
were  to  go  to  Kansas  to  enter  the  drug  business. 

I  am  a  practical  young  druggist  23  years  of  age 
and  have  some  money — a  few  hundred  dollars — 
with  which  to  go  into  business.  Would  you  advise 
Kansas  or  Colorado  as  a  good  part  of  the  west  for 
that  business? 

I  have  also  written  some  for  the  press,  but  with 
little  success.  I  inclose  you  a  few  slips  cut  from 
the  papers  in  which  these  articles  originally  ap- 
peared. I  send  stamp  for  reply  and  hope  you  will 
answer  me,  even  though  your  time  may  be  taken 
up  pretty  well  by  other  matters. 

Respectfully  yours, 
AdolpJi  Jaynes,  Lock-Box  604. 


CORD  WOOD.  129 

HUDSON,  Wis.,  Oct.  1. — Mr.  Adolph  Jaynes, 
Lock-Box  604. — DEAE  SIK:  Your  favor  of  late  date 
is  at  hand,  and  I  take  pleasure  in  writing  this  dic- 
tated letter  to  you,  using  the  columns  of  the  Chi- 
cago Daily  Neivs  as  a  delicate  way  of  reaching 
you.  I  will  take  the  liberty  of  replying  to  your 
last  question  first,  if  you  pardon  me,  and  I  say  that 
you  would  do  better,  no  doubt  at  once,  in  a  finan- 
cial way,  to  go  on  with  your  drug  business  than  to 
monkey  with  literature. 

In  the  first  place,  your  style  of  composition  is 
like  the  present  style  of  dress  among  men.  It  is 
absolutely  correct,  and  therefore  it  is  absolutely 
like  that  of  nine  men  out  of  every  ten  we  meet. 
Your  style  of  writing  has  a  mustache  on  it,  wears 
a  three-button  cutaway  of  some  Scotch  mixture, 
carries  a  cane,  and  wears  a  straight  stand-up  collar 
and  scarf.  It  is  so  correct  and  so  exactly  in  con- 
formity with  the  prevailing  style  of  composition, 
and  your  thoughts  are  expressed  so  thoroughly  like 
other  people's  methods  of  dressing  up  their  senten- 
ces and  sand-papering  the  soul  out  of  what  they 
say,  that  I  honestly  think  you  would  succeed  bet- 
ter by  trying  to  subsist  upon  the  quick  sales  and 
small  profits  which  the  drug  trade  insures. 

Now,  let  us  consider  the  question  of  location : 

Seriously,  you  ought  to  look  over  the  ground 
yourself,  but  as  you  have  asked  me  to  give  you  my 


130  'BILL 

best  judgment  on  the  question  of  preference  as 
between  Kansas  and  Colorado,  I  will  say  without 
hesitation  that,  if  you  mean  by  the  drug  business 
the  sale  of  sure-enough  drugs,  medicines,  paints, 
oils,  glass,  putty,  toilet  articles,  and  prescriptions 
carefully  compounded,  I  would  not  go  to  Kansas  at 
this  time. 

If  you  would  like  to  go  to  a  flourishing  country 
and  put  out  a  big  basswood  mortar  in  front  of  your 
shop  in  order  to  sell  the  tincture  of  damnation 
throughout  bleeding  Kansas,  now  is  your  golden 
opportunity.  Now  is  the  accepted  time.  If  it  is 
the  great,  big,  burning  desire  of  your  heart  to  go  in- 
to a  town  of  2,000  people  and  open  the  thirteenth 
drug  store  in  order  that  you  may  stand  behind  a  tall 
black  walnut  prescription  case  day  in  and  day  out, 
with  a  graduate  in  one  hand  and  a  Babcock  fire- 
extinguisher  in  the  other,  filling  orders  for  whiskey 
made  of  stump- water  and  the  juice  of  future  pun- 
ishment, you  will  do  well  to  go  to  Kansas.  It  is 
a  temperance  state  and  no  saloons  are  allowed 
there.  All  is  quiet  and  orderly,  and  the  drug  bus- 
iness is  a  great  success. 

You  can  run  a  dummy  drug  store  there  with 
two  dozen  dreary  old  glass  bottles  on  the  shelves, 
punctuated  by  the  hand  of  time  and  the  Kansas  fly 
of  the  period,  and  with  a  prohibitory  law  at  your 
back  and  a  tall,  red  barrel  in  the  back  room  filled 


CO  ED  WOOD.  131 

with  a  mixture  that  will  burn  great  holes  into  na- 
ture's heart  and  make  the  cemetery  blossom  as 
the  rose,  and  in  a  few  years  you  can  sell  enough  of 
this  justly  celebrated  preparation  for  household, 
scientific  and  experimental  purposes  only  to  fill 
your  flabby  pockets  with  wealth  and  paint  the  pure 
air  of  Kansas  a  bright  and  inflammatory  red. 

If  you  sincerely  and  earnestly  yearn  for  a  field 
where  you  may  go  forth  and  garner  an  honest  har- 
vest from  the  legitimate  effort  of  an  upright  soda 
fountain  and  free  and  open  sale  of  slippery  elm  in 
its  unadulterated  condition,  I  would  go  to  some 
state  where  I  would  not  have  to  enter  into  compe- 
tition with  a  style  of  pharmacy  that  has  the  un- 
holy instincts  and  ambitions  of  a  blind  pig,  I  would 
not  go  into  the  field  where  red- eyed  ruin  simply 
waited  for  a  prescription  blank,  not  necessarily  for 
publication,  but  simply  as  a  guaranty  of  good 
faith,  in  order  that  it  may  bound  forth  from  be- 
hind the  prescription  case  and  populate  the  poor- 
houses  and  the  paupers'  nettle-grown  addition  to 
the  silent  city  of  the  dead. 

The  great  question  of  how  best  to  down  the 
demon  rum  is  before  the  American  people,  and  it 
will  not  be  put  aside  until  it  is  settled ;  but  while 
this  is  being  attended  to,  Mr.  Jaynes,  I  would  start 
a  drug  store  farther  away  from  the  center  of  con- 
flict and  go  on  joyously,  sacrificing  expensive  tine- 


132  BILL 

tures,  compounds,  and  syrups  at  bed-rock  prices. 

Go  on,  Mr.  Jaynes,  dealing  out  to  the  yearning, 
panting  public,  drugs,  paints,  oils,  glass,  putty, 
varnish,  patent  medicines,  and  prescriptions  care- 
fully compounded,  with  none  to  molest  or  make 
afraid,  but  shun,  oh  shun  the  wild-eyed  pharmaco- 
peia that  contains  naught  but  the  festering  fluid  so 
popular  in  Kansas,  a  compound  that  holds  crime  in 
solution  and  ruin  in  bulk,  that  shrivels  up  a  man's 
gastric  economy,  and  sears  great  ragged  holes  into 
his  immortal  soul.  Take  this  advice  home  to  your 
heart  and  you  will  ever  command  the  hearty  co- 
operation of  "yours  for  health,"  as  the  late  Lydia  E. 
Pinkham  so  succinctly  said.  Bill  Nye. 


BILL   NYE    STOPS   AT   A   PLACE   WHEKE  TWO   KOADS  FORK. 

HIS  MOURNFUL  PILGRIMAGE  THROUGH  DESOLATE 
WILDS    IN  COMPANY    WITH    THE    SOULFUL 

HOOSIER  POET A  TALE  OF  GLOOM 

WITHOUT  A  RAY  OF  HOPE. 

We  are  moving  about  over  the  country,  James 
Whit  comb  Kiley  and  I,  in  the  capacity  of  a  moral 
and  spectacular  show,  I  attend  to  the  spectacular 
part  of  the  business.  That  is  more  in  my  line. 


CORD  WOOD.  133 

I  am  writing  this  at  an  imitation  hotel  where 
the  roads  fork.  I  will  call  it  the  Fifth  Avenue 
Hotel  because  the  hotel  at  a  railroad  junction  is 
generally  called  the  Fifth  Avenue,  or  the  Gem 
City  House,  or  the  Palace  Hotel.  I  stopped  at  an 
inn  some  years  since  called  the  Palace,  and  I 
can  truly  say  that  if  it  had  ever  been  a  palace  it  was 
very  much  run  down  when  I  visited  it. 

Just  as  the  fond  parent  of  a  white-eyed,  two- 
legged  freak  of  nature  loves  to  name  his  mentally- 
diluted  son  Napoleon,  and  for  the  same  reason  that 
a  prominent  horse  owner  in  Illinois  last  year  socked 
my  name  on  a  tall,  buckskin-colored  colt  that  did 
not  resemble  me,  intellectually  or  physically,  a  colt 
that  did  not  know  enough  to  go  around  a  barbed- 
wire  fence,  but  sought  to  sift  himself  through  it 
into  an  untimely  grave,  so  this  man  has  named  his 
sway-backed  wigwam  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel. 

It  is  different  from  the  Fifth  Avenue  in  many 
ways.  In  the  first  place  there  is  not  so  much  trav- 
el and  business  in  its  neighborhood.  As  I  said 
before,  this  is  where  two  railroads  fork.  In  fact, 
that  is  the  leading  industry  here.  The  growth  of 
the  town  is  naturally  slow,  but  it  is  a  healthy 
growth.  There  is  nothing  in  the  nature  of  danger- 
ous or  wild-cat  speculation  in  the  advancement  of 
this  place,  and  while  there  has  been  no  noticeable 
or  rapid  advance  in  the  principal  business,  there 


134  BILL 

has  been  no  falling  off  at  all,  and  these  roads  are 
forking  as  much  to-day  as  they  did  before  the  war, 
while  the  same  three  men  who  were  present  for  the 
first  glad  moment  are  still  here  to  witness  its 
operation. 

Sometimes  a  train  is  derailed,  as  the  papers  call 
it,  and  two  or  three  people  have  to  remain  over,  as 
we  did,  all  night.  It  is  at  such  a  time  that  the 
Fifth  Avenue  Hotel  is  the  scene  of  great  excite- 
ment. A  large  codfish,  with  a  broad  and  sunny 
smile,  and  his  bosom  full  of  rock  salt,  is  tied  in  the 
creek  to  freshen  and  fit  himself  for  the  responsible 
position  of  floor  manager  of  the  codfish  ball. 

A  pale  chambermaid,  wearing  a  black  jersey  with 
large  pores  in  it,  through  which  she  is  gently  per- 
colating, now  goes  joyously  up  the  stairs  to  make 
the  little  post-office  lock-box  rooms  look  ten  times 
worse  than  they  ever  did  before.  She  warbles  a 
low  refrain  as  she  nimbly  knocks  loose  the  venera- 
ble dust  of  centuries,  and  sets  it  afloat  throughout 
the  rooms.  All  is  bustle  about  the  house. 

Especially  the  chambermaid. 

We  were  put  into  the  guest's  chamber  here.  It 
has  two  atrophied  beds  made  up  of  pains  and 
counterpanes. 

This  last  remark  conveys  to  the  reader  the  pres- 
ence of  a  light,  joyous  feeling  which  is  wholly  as- 
sumed on  my  part. 


COED  WOOD.  135 

The  door  of  our  room  is  full  of  holes  where  locks 
have  been  wrenched  off  in  order  to  let  the  coroner 
in.  Last  night  I  could  imagine  that  I  was  in  the 
act  of  meeting,  personally,  the  famous  people  who 
have  tried  to  sleep  here  and  who  moaned  through 
the  night  and  who  died  while  waiting  for  the 
dawn. 

I  have  no  doubt  in  the  world  but  there  is  quite 
a  good-sized  delegation  from  this  hotel  of  guests 
who  hesitated  about  committing  suicide,  because 
they  feared  to  tread  the  sidewalks  of  perdition,  but 
who  became  desperate  at  last  and  resolved  to  take 
their  chances,  and  they  have  never  had  any  cause 
to  regret  it. 

We  washed  our  hands  on  door-knob  soap,  wiped 
them  on  a  slippery  elm  court-plaster,  that  had 
made  quite  a  reputation  for  itself  under  the  non- 
de-plume  of  "  Towel,"  tried  to  warm  ourselves  at 
a  pocket  inkstand  stove,  that  gave  out  heat  like  a 
dark  lantern  and  had  a  deformed  elbow  at  the  back 
of  it. 

The  chambermaid  is  very  versatile,  and  waits  on 
the  table  while  not  engaged  in  agitating  the  over- 
worked mattresses  and  puny  pillows  upstairs.  In 
this  way  she  imparts  the  odor  of  fried  pork  to  the 
pillow  cases  and  kerosene  to  the  pie. 

She  has  a  wild,  nervous  and  apprehensive  look 
in  her  eye  as  though  she  feared  that  some  Hercu- 


136  BILL  NY&S 

lean  guest  might  seize  her  in  his  great,  strong  arms 
and  bear  her  away  to  a  justice  of  the  peace  and 
marry  her.  She  certainly  cannot  fully  realize  how 
thoroughly  secure  she  is  from  such  a  calamity. 
She  is  just  as  safe  as  she  was  forty  years  ago,  when 
she  promised  her  aged  mother  that  she  would  never 
elope  with  anyone. 

Still,  she  is  sociable  at  times  and  converses  freely 
with  me  at  the  table,  as  she  leans  over  my  shoul- 
der, pensively  brushing  the  crumbs  into  my  lap 
with  a  general  utility  towel  which  accompanies  her 
in  her  various  rambles  through  the  house,  and  she 
asks  which  we  would  rather  have — "tea  or  eggs?" 

This  afternoon  we  will  pay  our  bill,  in  accord- 
ance with  a  life-long  custom  of  ours,  and  go  away 
to  permeate  the  busy  haunts  of  men.  It  will  be 
sad  to  tear  ourselves  away  from  the  Fifth  Avenue 
Hotel  at  this  place;  still,  there  is  no  great  loss 
without  some  small  gain,  and  at  our  next  hotel  we 
may  not  have  to  chop  our  own  wood  and  bring  it 
up-stairs  when  we  want  to  rest.  The  landlord  of 
a  hotel  who  goes  away  to  a  political  meeting  and 
leaves  his  guests  to  chop  their  own  wood,  and  then 
charges  them  full  price  for  the  rent  of  a  boisterous 
and  tempest-tossed  bed,  will  never  endear  himself 
to  those  with  whom  he  is  thrown  in  contact. 

We  leave  at  2 :30  this  afternoon,  hoping  that  the 
two  railroads  may  continue  to  fork  here  just  the 
same  as  though  we  had  remained. 


COED  WOOD.  137 


BILL  HYE'S  ]?OI^NEIFS. 

Last  fall  I  desired  to  add  to  my  rare  collection  a 
large  hornet's  nest.  I  had  an  enbalmed  tarantula 
and  her  porcelain  lined  nest,  and  I  desired  to  add 
to  these  the  gray  and  airy  home  of  the  hornet.  I 
procured  one  of  the  large  size  after  cold  weather 
and  hung  it  in  my  cabinet  by  a  string.  I  forgot 
about  it  until  this  spring.  When  warm  weather 
came,  something  reminded  me  of  it.  I  think  it  was 
a  hornet.  He  jogged  my  memory  in  some  way  and 
called  my  attention  to  it.  Memory  is  not  located 
where  I  thought  it  was.  It  seemed  as  though 
whenever  he  touched  me  he  awakened  a  memory 
—a  warm  memory  with  a  red  place  all  around  it. 

Then  some  more  hornets  came  and  began  to  rake 
up  old  personalities.  I  remember  that  one  of  them 
lit  on  my  upper  lip.  He  thought  it  was  a  rosebud. 
When  he  went  away  it  looked  like  a  gladiolus 
bulb.  I  wrapped  a  wet  sheet  around  it  to  take  out 
the  warmth  and  reduce  the  swelling  so  that  I  could 
go  through  the  folding-doors  and  tell  my  wife 
about  it. 

Hornets  lit  all  over  me  and  walked  around  on 
my  person.  I  did  not  dare  to  scrape  them  off, 
because  they  are  so  sensitive.  You  have  to  be  very 
guarded  in  your  conduct  toward  a  hornet. 


138  BILL 

I  remember  once  while  I  was  watching  the  busy 
little  hornet  gathering  honey  and  June  bugs  from 
the  bosom  of  a  rose,  years  ago.  I  stirred  him  up 
with  a  club,  more  as  a  practical  joke  than  anything 
else,  and  he  came  and  lit  on  my  sunny  hair — that 
was  when  I  wore  my  own  hair — and  he  walked 
around  through  my  gleaming  tresses  quite  awhile, 
making  tracks  as  large  as  a  watermelon  all  over  my 
head.  If  he  hadn't  run  out  of  tracks  my  head 
would  have  looked  like  a  load  of  summer  squashes. 
I  remember  I  had  to  thump  my  head  against  the 
smoke  house  in  order  to  smash  him,  and  I  had  to 
comb  him  out  with  a  fine  comb  and  wear  a  waste 
paper  basket  two  weeks  for  a  hat. 

Much  has  been  said  of  the  hornet,  but  he  has  an 
odd,  quaint  way  after  all,  that  is  forever  new. 


fl   Sl^AGBDY. 

Out  where  the  blue  waves  come  and  go, 
Out  where  the  zephyrs  kiss  the  strand, 

Down  where  the  damp  tides  ebb  and  flow, 
Where  the  ocean  monkeys  with  the  sand, 

William,  the  hungry,  rustles  for  his  meal, 

Slim  William,  the  eldest,  gathers  the  eel. 

Up  where  the  johnny  jump-ups  smile, 
Up  where  the  green  hills  meet  the  sky, 


CO  HD  WOOD.  139 

Where,  out  from  her  window  for  many  a  mile, 

She  watches  the  blue  sea  dimpling  lie, 
The  wife  of  the  eelist,  with  vizage  grim, 
Sits  in  the  gloaming  and  watches  for  him. 

Down  in  the  moist  and  moaning  sea, 
Down  where  the  day  can  never  come, 

With  staring  eyes  that  can  never  see 
And  lips  that  will  ever  continue  dumb, 

With  eels  in  his  breast,  in  a  large  wet  wave, 

William  is  filling  a  watery  grave. 

Up  where  the  catnip  is  breathing  hard, 
Up  where  the  tansy  is  flecked  with  dew, 

Where  the  vesper  soft  as  the  onion  peels 
Wakens  the  echoes  the  twilight  through, 

The  new-made  widow  still  watches  the  shore 

And  sits  there  and  waits,  as  I  said  before. 

They  come  and  tell  her  the  pitiful  tale, 

With  trembling  voice  and  tear-dimmed  eye, 

They  watch  her  cheek  grow  slightly  pale, 
Yet  wonder  at  the  calm  reply : 

"All  our  tears  are  but  idle,  gentlemen, 

Go  bring  in  the  eels  and  set  him  again." 


140  BILL  NYE'S 

SHE  BF?ONGO  ©ow. 


BILL    NYE    UNDEKTAKES    TO    MILK  HER  WHEN  THE  SIGN  IS 
NOT  EIGHT DISASTEOUS  EESULTS. 

When  I  was  young  and  used  to  roam  around 
over  the  country,  gathering  water-melons  in  the 
dark  of  the  moon,  I  used  to  think  I  could  milk  any- 
body's cow,  but  I  do  not  think  so  now.  I  do  not 
milk  a  cow  now  unless  the  sign  is  right,  and  it 
hasn't  been  right  for  a  good  many  years. 

The  last  cow  I  tried  to  milk  was  a  common  cow, 
born  in  obscurity;  kind  of  a  self-made  cow.  I 
remember  her  brow  was  low,  but  she  wore  her  tail 
high  and  she  was  haughty,  oh,  so  haughty. 

I  made  a  common-place  remark  to  her,  one  that 
is  used  in  the  very  best  of  society,  one  that  need 
not  have  given  offense  anywhere.  I  said  "so" — and 
she  "soed".  Then  I  told  her  to  "histe" — and  she 
histed.  But  I  thought  she  overdid  it.  She  put  too 
much  expression  in  it. 

Just  then  I  heard  something  crash  through  the 
window  of  the  barn  and  fall  with  a  dull,  sickening 
thud  on  the  outside. 

The  neighbors  came  to  see  what  it  was  that 
caused  the  noise.  They  found  that  I  had  done  it 
in  getting  through  the  window. 

I  asked  the  neighbors  if  the  barn  was  till  standing. 
They  said  it  was.  Then  I  asked  if  the  cow  was 


COED  WOOD.  141 

injured  much.  They  said  she  seemed  to  be  quite 
robust.  Then  I  requested  them  to  go  in  and  calm 
the  cow  a  little  and  see  if  they  could  get  my  plug 
hat  off  her  horns. 

I  am  buying  all  my  mik  now  of  a  milk-man.  I 
select  a  gentle  milk-man  who  will  not  kick  and  I 
feel  as  though  I  could  trust  him.  Then  if  he  feels 
as  though  he  could  trust  me,  it  is  all  right. 


AUTUMN    ©HOUGHCTS, 

There  can  be  nothing  sadder  than  the  solemn 
hush  of  nature  that  precedes  the  death  of  the  year. 
The  golden  glory  of  autumn,  with  the  billowy 
bronze  and  velvet  azure  of  the  skies  above  the 
royal  robes  of  oak  and  maple,  bespeak  the  closing 
hours  of  nature's  teeming  life  and  the  silent  fare- 
well to  humanity's  gauze  underwear. 

Thus  while  nature  dons  her  regal  robe  of  scarlet 
and  gold  in  honor  of  the  farewell  benefit  to  au- 
tumn, the  sad-eyed  poet  hies  away  to  a  neighboring 
clothes  line,  and  the  hour  of  nature's  grand  blow- 
out dons  the  flaming  flannels  of  his  friend  out  of 
respect  for  the  hectic  flush  of  the  dying  year. 

Leaves  have  their  time  to  fall,  and  so  has  the 
price  of  coal.  And  yet  how  sadly  at  variance  with 
decaying  nature  is  the  robust  coal  market. 


142  BILL  NYE'S 

Another  glorious  summer  with  its  wealth  of 
pleasant  memories  is  stored  away  among  the  ar- 
chives of  our  history.  Another  gloomy  winter  is 
upon  us.  These  wonderful  colors  that  flame  across 
the  softened  sky  of  Indian  summer  like  the  gory 
banner  of  royal  conqueror,  come  but  to  warn  us 
that  in  a  few  short  weeks  the  water  pipe  will  be 
bursted  in  the  kitchen  and  the  decorated  wash- 
bowl be  broken. 

We  flit  through  the  dreamy  hours  of  summer 
like  swift-winged  bumble  bees  amid  the  honey- 
suckle and  pumpkin  blossoms,  storing  away,  per- 
haps, a  little  glucose  honey  and  buckwheat  pan- 
cakes for  the  future,  but  all  at  once,  like  a  news- 
paper thief  in  the  night,  the  king  of  frost  and  ripe 
mellow  chilblains  is  upon  us,  and  we  crouch  beneath 
the  wintry  blast  and  hump  our  spinal  column  up 
into  the  crisp  air  like  a  Texas  steer  that  has 
thoughtlessly  swallowed  a  raw  cactus. 

Life  is  one  continued  round  of  alternative  joys 
and  sorrows.  To-day  we  are  on  the  top  wave  of 
prosperity  and  warming  ourselves  in  the  glad  sun- 
light of  plenty,  and  to-morrow  we  are  cast  down 
and  depressed  financially,  and  have  to  stand  off  the 
washer- woman  for  our  clean  shirt  or  stay  at  home 
from  the  opera. 

The  November  sky  already  frowns  down  upon  us, 
and  its  frozen  tears  begin  to  fall.  The  little 


CORD  WOOD.  143 

birds  have  hushed  their  little  lay.  So  has  the 
fatigued  hen.  Only  a  little  while,  and  the  yawn- 
ing chasm  in  the  cold,  calm  features  of  the 
Thanksgiving  turkey  will  be  filled  with  voluptuous 
stuffing  and  then  sewed  up.  The  florid  features 
of  the  polygamous  gobbler  will  be  wrapped  in  sad- 
ness, and  cranberry  pie  will  be  a  burden,  for  the 
veal  cutlet  goeth  to  its  long  home,  and  the  ice 
cream  freezer  is  broken  in  the  woodhouse. 

Oh,  time!  thou  baldheaded  pelican  with  the 
venerable  corncutter  and  the  second  hand  hour- 
glass, thou  playest  strange  pranks  upon  the  chil- 
dren of  men.  No  one  would  think,  to  look  at  thy 
bilious  countenance  and  store  teeth,  that  in  thy 
bony  bosom  lurked  such  eccentric  schemes. 

The  chubby  boy,  whose  danger  signal  hangs 
sadly  through  the  lattice-work  of  his  pants,  knows 
that  Time,  who  waits  for  no  man,  will  one  day,  if 
we  struggle  heroically  on,  give  him  knowledge  and 
suspenders,  and  a  solid  girl,  and  experience  and 
soft  white  mustache  and  eventually  a  low  grave 
in  the  valley  beneath  the  sighing  elms  and  the 
weeping  willow,  where,  in  the  misty  twilight  of  the 
year,  noiselessly  upon  his  breast  shall  fall  the  deaf 
leaf,  while  the  silent  tear  of  the  gray  autumnal  sky 
will  come  and  sink  into  the  yellow  grass  above  his 
head.  BILL  NYE. 


144  BILL  NTKS 

BILL  HYE'G  ^DYIGB  BAG. 


ANXIOUS   QUESTIONS   ANSWEEED, 


PKESIDENT  CLEVELAND'S   CHILLING  NEGLECT  OF  AN 

EDITOE  DENOUNCED THE  WOMAN  IN  THE 

SLEEPING    COACH — CALM    SEA- 
SONING  DEALT    OUT. 


ANSWEES   TO  COEEESPONDENTS. 

"Ghoulish  Glee"Bucyrus,  0.,  writes:  "For  two 
years  I  have  been  sending  a  copy  of  my  paper,  the 
4  Palladium  and  Observer '  to  President  Cleveland. 
Although  I  have  criticised  his  administration  edi- 
torially several  times,  I  have  done  so  with  the 
best  of  motives  and  certainly  for  his  good.  If  he 
was  angry  with  me  for  this,  he  surely  has  never  so 
expressed  himself  to  me,  but  last  August  I  sent 
him  a  bill  for  his  paper  covering  two  years  and 
over,  and  he  has  not  answered  my  letter  up  to 
this  date.  Will  you  answer  this  through  the  col- 
umns of  the  Daily  News  telling  me  what  I  had 
better  do,  and  so  that  others  who  may  be  in  the 
same  fix  can  understand  what  your  advice  would 
be  in  such  a  case?" 

Stop  his  paper.  By  all  means  deprive  him  of 
the  paper.  You  should  have  done  so  before. 
Then  you  will  feel  perfectly  free  to  criticise  his  ad- 
ministration to  the  bitter  end. 


COED  WOOD.  145 

Nothing  startles  a  president  any  more  than  to 
shut  off  a  paper  that  he  has  become  attached  to. 
Mr.  Cleveland  will  go  out  and  paw  around  in  the 
wet  grass  in  front  of  the  white  house,  and  finally 
he  will  go  in,  wondering  what  has  become  of  the 
Palladium  and  Observer.  In  a  week  or  two  he 
will  remit  and  tell  you  to  continue  sending  the 
paper.  Do  not  criticise  his  administration  too 
severely  till  you  see  whether  he  is  going  to  remit 
or  not. 

Early  Rose,  Mankato,  Minn.,  writes:  "Is  it 
proper  to  mark  passages  in  a  book  of  poems  loaned 
to  one  by  a  young  man  in  whom  one  feels  an  inter- 
est, or  should  one  be  content  with  simply  express- 
ing one's  admiration  of  certain  passages  in  the 
book?" 

I  think  the  latter  plan  would  be  preferable,  Kose. 
I  am  sure  that  young  ladies  make  a  great  mistake 
when  they  mark  the  earnest  and  impassioned  pas- 
sages in  a  book  of  poems  belonging  to  another.  I 
once  loaned  a  book  of  poems  written  by  a  gentle- 
man named  Swinburne.  In  this  book  Mr.  Swin- 
burne had  several  times  expressed  himself  as  being 
violently  in  love  with  all  the  works  of  nature,  es- 
pecially those  people  who  differed  with  him  in  the 
matter  of  sex.  He  wrote  so  fluently  and  so  ear- 
nestly regarding  the  matter  of  love  that  I  loaned  the 
book  to  a  young  lady,  hoping  that  she  would  take 


146  BILL 

this  as  a  vicarious  expression  of  my  sentiments. 
It  was  a  costly  book,  and  so  when  it  came  back 
with  Mr.  Swinburne's  sentiments  emphasized  by 
means  of  a  blue  pencil,  and  his  earnest  thoughts 
underscored  with  a  crochet  hook,  punctuated  with 
tears,  and  stabbed  with  a  hair-pin,  I  regretted  it 
very  much.  I  was  led  to  believe,  also,  by  reread- 
ing the  book,  that  she  was  in  the  habit  of  perusing 
it  at  the  breakfast  table,  and  that  she  was  a  victim 
of  the  omelet  habit. 

Do  not  mark  a  borrowed  book  unless  you  have 
more  friends  than  you  can  avail  yourself  of. 

Savant,  Tailliolty  Ind.:  You  can  get  Indian 
arrow-heads  now  almost  anywhere  except  on  the 
frontier.  A  good  hand-made  Indian  arrow  head  is 
now  made  in  Connecticut,  and  the  prices  are  not 
exorbitant.  I  believe  that  if  you  can  get  manu- 
facturers' rates,  delivered  on  board  the  cars  at  New 
Haven,  you  can  secure  enough  Indian  arrow-heads 
for  $25  to  fresco  the  sides  of  a  house.  See  that 
the  name  of  the  manufacturer  is  burned  in  the 
shank  of  each. 

You  will  have  no  more  trouble  in  securing  Indian 
skulls.  The  manufacture  of  Indian  skulls  has  not 
arrived  at  that  degree  of  perfection  which  we  hope 
for  it  in  the  future.  You  can  get  an  Indian  skull 
made  of  celluloid  now  that  looks  quite  nice  and 
ghastly,  or  you  can  secure  a  bear's  nose  made  of 


CORD  WOOD.  147 

hard  rubber,  with  pores  in  it  and  little  drops  of 
perspiration  standing  out  on  it.  These  noses  have 
been  used  with  great  success  in  securing  bounty  in 
the  New  England  states,  and  several  counties  in 
Maine  have  a  large  stock  of  rubber  bear  noses  on 
which  they  have  paid  large  bounties,  and  which 
they  would  now  sell  at  a  great  sacrifice. 

Aztec  pottery  excavated  from  old  mounds  in  the 
southwest  can  now  be  purchased  in  any  large  city 
or  made  to  order  at  the  leading  potteries  of  the 
country. 

Niagarn  Plummer,  Tutewler's  Crossing,  Tenn., 
asks :  "  Is  it  proper  to  use  the  following  expression, 
which  was  made  in  our  colored  debating  society 
three  weeks  ago  ?  If  you  will  answer  this  inquiry 
you  will  confer  a  blessing  on  two  young  ladies  who's 
got  a  bet  up  on  the  question.  The  expression  we 
agree  was  as  iollows : 

"  'He's  entitled  to  pay  me  for  them  pair  of  li- 
cense.' 

"I  claim  that  the  word  'them'  should  be  'those,' 
while  my  friend  Miss  Bonesette  Jackson  says  that 
the  sentence  is  correct.  Which  is  incorrect?" 

Where  both  have  done  so  well  it  is  hard  to 
say  which  is  the  more  incorrect.  I  will  withold 
my  opinion  till  your  debating  society  puts  in  an 
evening  devoted  to  the  discussion  of  this  question. 


148  BILL  NY&S 

Please  let  me  know  when  it  will  occur,  as  I  would 
like  to  be  there. 

Etiquette,  Chicago,  III.,  asks:  "Will  you 
answer  through  the  columns  of  the  Daily  News 
what  remedy  you  would  prescribe  for  the  great 
nuisance  while  traveling  of  being  compelled  to  wait 
all  the  forenoon  for  the  female  fiend  who  monopo- 
lizes one  end  of  the  sleeping  car  half  of  the  time 
and  the  other  end  of  the  car  the  other  half.  I  am 
a  lady,  and  nothing  tends  to  discourage  my  efforts 
in  trying  to  continue  such  like  this  constant  con- 
tact with  the  average  female  brute  who  bolts  her- 
self into  the  ladies'  dressing  room  in  a  sleeper  and 
remains  there  all  the  forenoon  calcimining  her  pur- 
ple nose  and  striving  to  beautify  her  chaotic  fea- 
tures. Do  tell  us  what  you  would  suggest." 

That  is  a  question  I  have  been  called  upon  to 
settle  before,  but  I  am  still  worrying  over  it.  I  do 
not  think  we  ought  to  fritter  away  our  time  on  the 
tariff  and  other  remote  matters  until  we  have,  once 
for  all,  met  and  settled  this  vital  question  which 
lies  so  near  to  every  heart. 

I  have  seen  a  large  woman  take  her  teeth  in  one 
hand  and  a  shawl- strap  full  of  hair  in  the  other 
and  adjourn  to  the  ladies'  dressing  room  at  Camp 
Douglas  and  finally  emerge  therefrom,  with  a 
smooch  of  prepared  chalk  over  each  eye,  at  Winona. 
All  that  time  half  a  dozen  ladies  in  the  car  gnawed 


CORDWOOD.  149 

their  under  lips  and  tried  to  look  happy.  I  have 
known  a  timid  young  lady  to  lose  her  breakfast 
because  this  same  ogress,  with  bristles  along  the 
back  of  her  neck,  as  usual  moved  into  the  dressing- 
room  and  lived  there  till  the  train  reached  its  des- 
tination and  the  dining-car  was  detached. 

Some  day  this  dressing-room  will  be  made  on 
the  plan  of  a  large  concertina,  operated  by  means 
of  clockwork,  and  after  this  venerable  hyena  has 
laundered  herself  and  primped  and  beautified  and 
upholstered  herself  and  waxed  her  mustache,  and 
insulted  the  plate-glass  mirror  for  an  hour  or  two 
by  constantly  compelling  it  to  reflect  her  features, 
the  walls  of  the  apartment  will  gradually  approach 
each  other,  and  when  that  woman  is  removed  she 
will  look  like  the  battle  of  Gettysburg. 


SWEENEY'S 
Eobert  Ormsby  Sweeney  is  a  druggist  of  St. 
Paul;  and  though  a  recent  chronological  record 
reveals  the  fact  that  he  is  a  direct  descendant  of  a 
sure-enough  king,  and  though  there  is  mighty  good 
purple,  royal  blood  in  his  veins  that  dates  back 
where  kings  used  to  have  something  to  do  to  earn 
their  salary,  he  goes  right  on  with  his  regular 
business,  selling  drugs  at  the  great  sacrifice  which 
druggists  will  make  sometimes  in  order  to  place 
their  goods  within  the  reach  of  all. 


150  BILL  NYE^S 

As  soon  as  I  learned  that  Mr.  Sweeney  had 
barely  escaped  being  a  crowned  head,  I  got  ac- 
quainted with  him  and  tried  to  cheer  him  up,  and 
I  told  him  that  people  wouldn't  hold  him  in  any  way 
reponsible,  and  that,  as  it  hadn't  shown  itself  in 
his  family  for  years,  he  might  perhaps  finally  wear 
it  out. 

He  is  a  mighty  pleasant  man,  anyhow,  and  you 
can  have  just  as  much  fun  with  him  as  you  could 
with  a  man  who  didn't  have  any  royal  blood  in  his 
veins.  You  would  be  with  him  for  days  on  a  fish- 
ing trip  and  never  notice  it  at  all. 

But  I  was  going  to  speak  more  in  particular  of 
Mi.  Sweeney's  cat.  Mr.  Sweeney  had  a  large  cat 
named  Dr.  Mary  Walker,  of  which  he  was  very 
fond.  Dr.  Mary  Walker  remained  at  the  drug 
store  all  the  time,  and  was  known  all  over  St.  Paul 
as  a  quiet  and  reserved  cat.  If  Dr.  Mary  Walker 
took  in  the  town  after  office  hours  nobody  seemed 
to  know  anything  about  it.  She  would  be  around 
bright  and  cheerful  the  next  morning,  and  attend 
to  her  duties  at  the  store  just  as  though  nothing 
whatever  had  ever  happened. 

One  day  last  summer  Mr.  Sweeney  left  a  large 
plate  of  fly-paper  with  water  on  it  in  the  window, 
hoping  to  gather  in  a  few  quarts  of  flies  in  a  de- 
ceased state.  Dr.  Mary  Walker  used  to  go  to  this 
window  during  the  afternoon  and  look  out  on  the 


COED  WOOD.  151  ; 

busy  street  while  she  called  up  pleasant  memories 
of  her  past  life.  That  afternoon  she  thought  she 
would  call  up  some  more  memories,  so  she  went  over 
on  the  counter,  and  from  there  jumped  down  on 
the  window-sill,  landing  with  all  four  feet  in  the 
plate  of  fly-paper. 

At  first  she  regarded  it  as  a  joke  and  treated  the 
matter  very  lightly,  but  later  on  she  observed  that 
the  fly-paper  stuck  to  her  feet  with  great  tenacity 
of  purpose.  Those  who.  have  never  seen  the  look 
of  surprise  and  deep  sorrow  that  a  cat  wears  when 
she  finds  herself  glued  to  a  whole  sheet  of  fly-paper 
can  not  fully  appreciate  the  way  Dr.  Mary  Walker 
felt.  She  did  not  dash  wildly  through  a  $150 
plate-glass  window,  as  some  cats  would  have  done. 
She  controlled  herself  and  acted  in  the  coolest 
manner,  though  you  could  have  seen  that  mentally 
she  suffered  intensely.  She  sat  down  a  moment  to 
more  fully  outline  a  plan  for  the  future.  In  doing 
so  she  made  a  great  mistake.  The  gesture  resulted 
in  gluing  the  fly-paper  to  her  person  in  such  a  way 
that  the  edge  turned  up  behind  her  in  the  most 
abrupt  manner  and  caused  her  great  inconvenience. 

Some  one  at  that  time  laughed  in  a  coarse  and 
heartless  way,  and  I  wish  you  could  have  seen  the 
look  of  pain  that  Dr.  Mary  Walker  gave  him. 

When  she  went  away,  she  did  not  go  around  the 
prescription  case  as  the  rest  of  us  did,  but  strolled 


152  BILL  NYKS 

through  the  middle  of  it,  and  so  on  out  through 
the  glass  door  at  the  rear  of  the  store.  We  did 
not  see  her  go  through  the  glass  door,  but  we  found 
pieces  of  fly-paper  and  fur  on  the  ragged  edges  of 
a  large  aperture  in  the  glass,  and  we  kind  of 
jumped  at  the  conclusion  that  Dr.  Mary  Walker 
had  taken  that  direction  in  retiring  from  the  room. 
Dr.  Mary  Walker  never  returned  to  St.  Paul, 
and  her  exact  whereabouts  are  not  known,  though 
every  effort  was  made  to  find  her.  Fragments  of 
fly-paper  and  brindle  hair  were  found  as  far  west 
as  the  Yellowstone  National  Park,  and  as  far  north 
as  the  British  line,  but  the  Doctor  herself  was  not 
found.  My  own  theory  is  that  if  she  turned  her 
bow  to  the  west  so  as  to  catch  the  strong  easterly 
gale  on  her  quarter,  with  the  sail  she  had  set  and 
her  tail  pointing  directly  toward  the  zenith,  the 
chances  for  Dr.  Mary  Walker's  immediate  return 
are  extremely  slim. 

BILL 

THE  HUMOEIST  WHITES   FEOM  HIS  WINTEE  EESOET  IN  HIS 
USUALLY   HAPPY  VEIN  ON  VAEIOUS  TOPICS. 

ASHEVILLE,  N.  C. — As  soon  as  I  saw  in  the  papers 
that  my  healtn  was  failing,  I  decided  to  wing  my 
way  South  for  the  winter.  So  I  closed  up  my 
establishment  at  Slipperyelmhurst,  told  the  game- 


CORD  WOOD.  153 

keeper  not  to  monkey  with  the  preserves  and  came 
here,  where  I  am  now  writing.  At  first  it  seems 
odd  to  me  that  I  should  be  writing  from  where  I 
now  am,  but  the  more  I  think  it  over  the  better 
I  am  reconciled  to  it,  for  what  better  place  can  a 
man  select  from  which  to  write  a  letter  than  the 
point  where  he  is  located  at  the  time. 

Asheville  is  an  enterprising  cosmopolitan  city  of 
six  or  seven  thousand  people  and  a  visiting  popula- 
tion during  the  season  of  sixty  thousand  more.  It 
is  situated  in  the  picturesque  valley  of  the  French 
Brood  and  between  the  Blue  Eidge  and  the  Alle- 
ghanies.  Asheville  is  the  metropolis  of  Western 
North  Carolina,  and  has  no  competition  nearer  than 
Knoxville,  Tenn.,  one  hundred  and  sixty  miles 
away,  and,  in  fact,  not  in  any  way  competing  with 
Asheville,  for  it  is  in  another  county  altogether. 

This  region  of  country  is  from  2,000  to  7,000 
feet  above  sea  level  and  is,  in  fact,  a  mountain  re- 
gion with  a  southern  exposure. 

Strange  stories  are  told  here  of  people  who  came 
five,  ten,  twenty  or  more  years  ago,  with  a  view  of 
dying  here,  but  who  afterward  decided  to  live  on, 
and  they  are  living  yet.  One  man  who  was  a  sur- 
vivor of  the  Samso-Philistine  war,  if  I  am  not  mis- 
taken, came  here  at  last  from  the  mouth  of  the 
Amazon,  full  of  malaria.  He  had  been  kind  of 
"down  in  the  mouth" — of  the  Amazon  for  some 


154  BILL 

years,  and  they  say  his  liver  looked  like  a  rubber 
door-mat  and  his  skin  was  like  the  cover  of  a  sun- 
kissed  ham. 

He  picked  up  his  spirits  here  and  recovered  his 
youth,  and  though  he  was  very  old  when  he  came, 
he  is  still  older  now  and  in  pretty  good  health.  I 
went  to  see  him  the  other  day.  He  is  so  old  that 
there  is  moss  on  the  north  side  of  him  and  hiero- 
glyphics on  his  feet.  When  I  made  some  facetious 
remarks  to  him  and  told  him  a  story  I  had  recently 
acquired,  he  brightened  up  a  good  deal  and  emitted 
a  dry,  cackling  laugh  like  a  xylophone,  and  said 
that  he  believed  he  enjoyed  that  story  just  as  well 
as  he  did  when  they  used  to  tell  it  in  the  rifle-pits 
in  front  of  Troy. 

He  said  he  liked  Asheville  very  much  indeed. 

Asheville  is  called  the  Switzerland  of  America. 
It  has  been  my  blessed  privilege  during  the  past 
twenty  years  to  view  nearly  all  the  Switzerlands 
of  America  that  are  here,  but  this  is  fully  the 
equal  if  not  the  superior  of  any  of  them. 

You  can  climb  to  the  top  of  Beaucatcher  Moun- 
tain and  see  a  beautiful  sight  in  any  direction,  and 
on  most  any  day  of  the  year.  Every  where  the 
eye  rests  on  a  broad  sweep  of  dark- blue  climate. 
Up  in  the  gorges,  under  the  whispering  pines, 
along  the  rhododendron  bordered  margins  of  the 
Swannonoa,  or  the  French  Brood,  out  through  the 


CORDWOOD.  155 

Gap,  and  down  the  thousand  mountain  brooks,  you 
will  find  enough  climate  in  twenty  minutes  to  last 
a  week. 

The  chief  products  of  Western  North  Carolina 
are  smoking  tobacco  and  climate.  If  you  do  not 
like  the  climate  you  can  keep  yourself  to  the 
smoking  tobacco. 

Here  you  will  find  old  Mr.  Ozone  with  his  coat  off 
and  a  feather  duster  in  his  hand,  prepared  to  dust 
the  cobwebs  from  the  catacombs  of  the  asthmatic 
or  the  comsumptive.  There  is  enough  climate 
wasted  here  every  year  to  supply  a  city  the  size  of 
Chicago.  Moreover,  there  is  now  a  handsome  ho- 
tel here  called  the  Battery  Park — that  has  been 
full  ever  since  it  was  built  and  you  can  get  good 
saddle  horses,  carriages  or  donkeys  at  reasonable 
rates  in  town. 

The  donkey  is  quite  a  feature  of  this  country  as 
he  is  apt  to  be  of  all  mountain  countries  in  fact.  I 
have  never  associated  with  a  more  genial  urbane  or 
refined  donkey  than  we  have  here.  He  is  generally 
a  soft  mouse  color,  about  nine  hands  high,  and  de- 
lights in  making  small,  elongated  foot-prints  on  the 
sands  of  time. 

This  small  animal  of  the  mountains  is  frequently 
accompanied  by  a  robust  but  poorly-modulated 
voice.  It  is  very  pathetic  and  generally  needs  a 
little  oil  on  it.  The  North  Carolina  donkey  like 


156  BILL 

the  Colorado  burro,  lives  to  a  great  age.  He  then 
dies. 

Asheville  has  splendid  water  works  supplying 
first-class  water  to  those  who  wish  to  use  this  pop- 
ular fluid ;  electric  lights  all  over  the  city,  a  street 
railway  organized  with  its  money  put  up  to  con- 
struct it  next  summer,  first-class  churches,  schools 
and  colleges,  well  supplied  markets  with  moderate 
prices,  and  lots  of  genuine  attractions  beside  the 
climate.  Fuel  and  whiskey  are  about  the  same 
that  they  are  in  Chicago,  so  a  man  need  not  suffer 
here  provided  he  has  a  moderate  income. 

The  sportsman  may  sport  here  with  impunity, 
and  the  angler  may  also  triangular  relaxation. 

Moonshine  whisky  is  also  produced  here  in  the 
mountains,  though  in  a  crude  way,  and  very  quiet- 
ly. None  of  the  moonshiners  advertise  much  in 
the  papers.  They  do  not  care  for  a  big  run  of 
trade,  but  seem  content  to  remain  in  obscurity. 
Sometimes,  however,  their  work  attracts  the  atten- 
tion of  prominent  people  who  come  out  and  call  on 
them  with  shot-guns  and  regrets. 

Then  the  moonshiner  does  his  distillery  up  in  a 
napkin  and  goes  away  into  the  primeval  forest. 
Some  years  ago  a  party  of  revenue  officers  hunted 
out  one  of  these  amateur  distillers  and  chased  him 
up  the  side  of  the  mountain,  where  they  surround- 
ed and  captured  him  with  his  distillery  on  his  back, 


CORD  WOOD.  157 

like  a  Babcock  fire-extinguisher,  and  still  warm. 

The  officer,  in  his  report  of  the  capture,  referred 
to  it  as  a  still  hunt,  whereupon  his  commission  was 
promptly  revoked.  The  man  who  tries  to  have 
any  fun  with  the  present  Administration  must  have 
his  resignation  where  he  can  put  his  hand  on  it  at 
a  moment's  warning. 


DECLINED  WITH  SHANES. 

BILL    NYE    POLITELY    KEFUSES     THE    JOB    OF    KING     OF 
BULGAEIA. 

HE      GIVES    HIS    SEASONS    FOE    THE     DECLINATION     AND 

THKOWS  IN  CHUNKS    OF   HEAVY-WEIGHT  ADVICE 

— ADVISABILITY     OF     FOKMING     A 

ROYAL     TEADES-UNION. 

Bill  Nye  has  furnished  to  the  World  the  follow- 
ing copy  of  a  cable  dispatch  just  forwarded  to  the 
Allied  Powers  of  Europe  : 

SLIPPEEYELMHUEST,  HUDSON,  Wis. — To  the  Allied 
Powers,  care  of  Lord  Salisbury.  Gentlemen  : 
Your  favor  of  recent  date  regarding  my  acceptance 
of  the  Bulgarian  throne,  which  is  now  vacant  and 
for  rent,  in  which  note  you  tender  me  the  use  of 
said  throne  for  one  year,  with  the  privilege  of  three, 
is  at  hand.  You  also  state  that  the  Allied  Powers 
are  not  favorable  to  Prince  Nicholas  and  that  you 
would  prefer  a  dark  horse.  Looking  over  the  entire 


158  BILL  NYE'S 

list  of  obscure  men,  it  would  seem  you  have  been 
unable  .  to  fix  upon  a  man  who  has  made  a  better 
showing  in  this  line  than  I  have. 

While  I  thank  you  for  this  kind  offer  of  a  throne 
that  has,  as  you  state,  been  newly  refitted  and  re- 
furnished throughout,  I  must  decline  it  for  reasons 
which  I  will  try  to  give  in  my  own  rough,  unpol- 
ished way. 

In  the  first  place  I  read  in  the  dispatches  to-day 
that  Russia  is  mobilizing  her  troops,  and  I  do  not 
want  anything  to  do  with  a  country  that  will  treat 
its  soldiers  in  that  way.  Troops  have  certain  rights 
as  well  as  those  who  have  sought  the  pleasanter 
walks  of  peace. 

That  is  not  all.  I  do  not  care  to  enter  into  a 
squabble  in  which  I  am  not  interested.  Neither 
do  I  care  to  go  to  Bulgaria  in  the  capacity  of  a 
carpet-bag  monarch  from  the  ten-cent  counter, 
wearing  a  boiler-iron  overcoat  by  day  and  a  stab- 
proof  corset  at  night.  I  have  always  been  in  favor 
of  Bulgaria's  selection  of  a  monarch  viva  voce  or 
vox  populi,  whichever  you  think  would  look  the 
best  in  print. 

I  hate  to  see  a  monarch  in  hot  water  all  the  time 
and  threatening  to  abdicate.  Supposing  he  does 
abdicate,  what  good  will  that  do,  when  he  leaves  a 
widow  with  nothing  but  a  second-hand  throne  and 
a  crown  two  sizes  too  small  for  his  successor?  I 


CORD  WOOD.  159 

have  always  said,  and  I  still  say,  that  nothing  can 
be  more  pitiful  ihan  the  sight  of  a  lovely  queen 
whose  husband,  in  a  wild  frenzy  of  remorse,  has 
abdicated  himself. 

Nothing,  I  repeat,  can  be  sadder  than  this  pic- 
ture of  a  deserted  queen,  left  high  and  dry,without 
means,  forced  at  last  to  go  to  the  pawnbrokers  with 
a  little  plated,  fluted  crown  with  rabbit-skin  ear- 
tabs  on  it ! 

We  are  prone  to  believe  that  a  monarch  has 
nothing  to  do  but  issue  a  ukase  or  a  mandamus  and 
that  he  will  then  have  all  the  funds  he  wants ;  but 
such  is  not  the  case.  Lots  of  our  most  successful 
monarchs  are  liable  to  be  overtaken  any  year  by  a 
long,  cold  winter  and  found  as  late  as  Christmas 
reigning  in  their  summer  scepters. 

I  am  inclined  also  to  hesitate  about  accepting 
the  Bulgarian  throne  for  another  reason — I  do  not 
care  to  be  deposed  when  I  want  to  do  something 
else.  I  have  had  my  deposition  taken  several 
times  and  it  did  not  look  like  me  either  time. 

I  think  that  you  monarchs  ought  to  stand  by 
each  other  more.  If  you  would  form  a  society  of 
free  and  independent  monarchs  there  in  Europe, 
where  you  are  so  plenty,  you  could  have  a  good 
time  and  every  little  while  you  could  raise  your 
salaries  if  you  worked  it  right. 

Now  you  pull  and  haul  each  other  all  the  time 


160  BILL 

and  keep  yourselves  in  hot  water  day  and  night. 
That's  no  way  for  a  dynasty  any  more  than  any 
one  else.  It  impairs  your  usefulness  and  fills  our 
telegraphic  columns  full  of  names  that  we  can  not 
pronounce.  Every  little  while  we  have  to  pay  the 
operator  at  this  end  of  the  cable  ten  dollars  for 
writing  in  a  rapid,  flowing  hand  that  "meanwhile 
Eussia  will  continue  to  disregard  the  acts  of  the 
Sobranje." 

Why  should  a  great  country  like  Kussia  go  about 
trying  to  make  trouble  with  alow-priced  Sobranje! 
I  think  that  a  closer  alliance  of  crowned  heads, 
whose  interests  are  identical,  would  certainly  re- 
lieve the  monotony  of  many  a  long,  tedious  reign. 
If  I  were  to  accept  the  throne  of  Bulgaria,  which 
is  not  likely,  so  long  as  my  good  right  arm  can 
still  jerk  a  fluent  cross-cut  saw  in  the  English 
tongue,  I  would  form  a  syndicate  of  monarchs 
with  grips,  pass-words,  explanations  and  signals; 
every  scepter  would  have  a  contralto  whistle  in 
the  butt  end  which  could  be  used  as  a  sign  of 
distress,  while  the  other  end  could  have  a  cork 
in  it,  and  then  steering  a  tottering  dynasty  down 
through  the  dim  vista  of  crumbling  centuries 
would  not  be  so  irksome  as  it  now  is. 

As  it  is  now,  three  or  four  allied  powers  ask  a 
man  to  leave  his  business  and  squat  on  a  cold,  hard 
throne  for  a  mere  pittance,  and  then  just  as  he 


CORD  WOOD.  161 

begins  to  let  his  whiskers  grow  and  learns  to  dodge 
a  big  porcelain  bomb  those  same  allied  powers 
jump  on  top  of  him  all  spraddled  out  and  ask  him 
for  his  deposition.  That  is  no  way  to  treat  an  ama- 
teur monarch  who  is  trying  to  do  right. 

You  can  see  that  unless  you  stand  by  each  other 
the  thrones  of  Europe  will  soon  be  empty,  and 
every  two-dollar  a  day  hotel  in  America  will  have 
an  heir  apparently  to  the  throne  for  a  head- waiter, 
with  a  coronet  put  on  his  clothes  with  a  rubber 
stamp  and  a  loaded  scepter  up  his  sleeve. 

If  you  want  to  rear  your  children  to  love  and 
respect  the  monarchy  industry  you  must  afford 
them  better  protection.  I  say  this  as  a  man  who 
may  not  live  to  be  over  one  hundred  years  of  age, 
and  with  my  feet  thus  settling  into  the  boggy 
shores  of  time  let  me  beg  of  you,  monarchs  and 
monarchesses,  to  make  your  calling  an  honorable  one. 
Teach  your  children  and  their  children  to  respect 
the  business  by  which  their  parents  earned  their 
bread.  Show  them  it  is  honorable  to  empire  a 
country  if  they  do  it  right.  Teach  them  that  to 
do  right  is  better  than  to  fraudulently  turn  a  jack 
from  the  bottom  of  the  pack.  Teach  them  it  is 
better  to  be  a  popular  straight  out-and-out  artisan 
king  who  is  sincere  about  it  than  to  be  a  monarch 
who  dares  not  leave  his  throne  night  or  day  for  fear 
that  somebody  will  put  a  number  of  bombs  under 
it  or  criticise  him  in  the  papers. 


